The End of Digging to America

The book, as you can probably guess from the title, is about immigration. Two extremely different families, the Yazdans and the Donaldsons, adopt two little baby girls from Korea. The girls names are Jin-Ho and Sooki. Yet the Yazdans change Sooki's name to Susan. They meet at the airport and you can see the difference of the families just from the first page describing the arrival at the airport of the two girls. The Donaldsons are loud, big, and very... American. And the Yazdans are an exotic Iranian family, which had only a few people come to the airport to meet the baby girl. Friendly Mrs. Donaldson says they must come over to their house and have the girls be friends, what with all the things the girls have in common. Eventually the two families bond after many, many awkward dinner parties. But the book isn't just about the girls being adopted from Korea, it is more about the Yazdans struggle to look American and how the Donaldsons try so hard to be accepting of other's cultures. For example, only the Yazdans change Susan's Korean name because maybe they don't want her to experience what they had to. They also dress Susan in jeans and overalls at a young age. They even bought her an American Girl Doll. Yet the Donaldsons buy traditional Korean outfits to dress Jin-Ho in and remind Jin-Ho of maybe going to Korea one day. I find it funny though that despite trying to Americanize and de-Americanize the girls, Susan sings traditional Korean songs, speaks Farsi, and completely ignores her doll. And Jin-Ho loves to wear jeans, begs for an American-Girl doll, and doesn't know why she would ever want to go to Korea. Another story of immigration is inside the book. Susan's grandmother, Maryan Yazdan, constantly says how hard she tried to be modern and American. And complains about being treated so differently despite her efforts. I agree with this, but I don't like the fact that Maryam is always saying things like this. The author was born in Minneapolis and grew up in North Carolina. What does she know about immigrants issues with fitting in? One thing I find interesting is that Maryam discusses her first days in American saying how she tried to push away her Iranian roots. But as she became older, she discusses wishing to have kept some things reminding her of home. Like she realizes the mistake she made trying to fit in. Because here we don't need to all be the same, that's why America is called the salad bowl!