Digging to America : [a novel]

Select an Action

Title:

Digging to America : [a novel]

Author:

Tyler, Anne, author.

Brown, Blair, narrator.

Summary:

Two families awaiting the arrival of their adopted infant daughters from Korea meet at the airport. The families lives become interwined after the Donaldsons, a young American couple invite the Yazdan's, Maryam, her son and his Iranian American wife to an arrival party, which becomes an annual event. Maryam, who came to this country thirty-five years earlier, feels her values threatened when she is courted by a newly widowed Donaldson. A penetrating light on the American way as seen from two perspectives, those who are born here and those who are still struggling to fit in.

General Note:

Subtitle from container.

Compact discs.

Edition:

Unabridged ed.; Library ed.

Physical Description:

7 sound discs (ca. 74 min. each) : digital ; 4 3/4 in.

Genre:

Psychological fiction.

Domestic fiction.

Audiobooks.

Local Note:

Random House.

Subject Term:

Iranian American women -- Fiction.

Assimilation (Sociology) -- Fiction.

Intercountry adoption -- Fiction.

Iranian Americans -- Fiction.

Women immigrants -- Fiction.

Friendship -- Fiction.

Widows -- Fiction.

Geographic Term:

Baltimore (Md.) -- Fiction.

Author(s):

Brown, Blair,

Publisher:

Books on Tape,

Publication Date:

2006

ISBN:

9781415930328

Publication Information:

Santa Ana, CA : Books on Tape, p2006.

Call Number:

CDB TYLER

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Item Barcode	Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
33607001911216	Adult Fiction Books on CDs	TYLER	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

Author Notes

Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota on October 25, 1941. She graduated from Duke University at the age of 19 and completed graduate work in Russian studies at Columbia University. Before becoming a full-time author, she worked as a librarian and bibliographer.

Her first novel, If Morning Ever Comes, was published in 1964. Her other works include Saint Maybe, Back When We Were Grownups, Digging to America, Noah's Compass, The Beginner's Goodbye, A Spool of Blue Thread, and Vinegar Girl. She has won several awards including the PEN Faulkner Award in 1983 for Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, the 1985 National Book Critics Circle Award for The Accidental Tourist, and the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Breathing Lessons. The Accidental Tourist was adapted into a 1988 movie starring William Hurt and Geena Davis. In 2018 her title, Clock Dance, made the bestsellers list.

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (3)

School Library Journal Review

Adult/High School-Two families arrive at the Baltimore/Washington International Airport in August 1997 to claim the Korean infants they have adopted. Strangers until that evening, they are destined to begin a friendship that will span their adoptive daughters' childhoods. Bitsy and Brad Donaldson are the quintessential middle-class, white American couple. Sami and Ziba Yazdan are Iranian Americans. From the beginning, the differences in the ways they will raise their daughters are obvious: Bitsy's well-meaning but overzealous efforts to retain her child's Korean heritage are evident in the chosen name-Jin-Ho-and in the Korean costumes that she dresses the girl in every year as they mark the anniversary of the adoption date. The Yazdans are comfortable with their daughter Susan's assimilation into their own Iranian-American culture. When Bitsy's widowed father begins to show romantic interest in Susan's grandmother, cultural differences are brought to a head. Tyler weaves a story that speaks to how we come to terms with our identity in multicultural America, and how we form friendships that move beyond the unease of differences. She does not dwell on the September 11 attacks, but subtly portrays the distrust that the Yazdans have to endure in the following months. Tyler's gift, as in her other novels, is her ability to infuse the commonplace with meaning and grace, and teens will appreciate her perceptiveness in exploring relationships within and between families across the cultural spectrum.-Kim Dare, Chantilly Regional Library, Fairfax County, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publisher's Weekly Review

Tyler (Breathing Lessons) encompasses the collision of cultures without losing her sharp focus on the daily dramas of modern family life in her 17th novel. When Bitsy and Brad Donaldson and Sami and Ziba Yazdan both adopt Korean infant girls, their chance encounter at the Baltimore airport the day their daughters arrive marks the start of a long, intense if sometimes awkward friendship. Sami's mother, Maryam Yazdan, who carefully preserves her exotic "outsiderness" despite having emigrated from Iran almost 40 years earlier, is frequently perplexed by her son and daughter-in-law's ongoing relationship with the loud, opinionated, unapologetically American Donaldsons. When Bitsy's recently widowed father, Dave, endearingly falls in love with Maryam, she must come to terms with what it means to be part of a culture and a country. Stretching from the babies' arrival in 1997 until 2004, the novel is punctuated by each year's Arrival Party, a tradition manufactured and comically upheld by Bitsy; the annual festivities gradually reveal the families' evolving connections. Though the novel's perspective shifts among characters, Maryam is at the narrative and emotional heart of the touching, humorous story, as she reluctantly realizes that there may be a place in her heart for new friends, new loves and her new country after all. (May 9) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Library Journal Review

At a point when foreign adoptions are being contested and immigration continues to be problematic, Tyler seems to once again have her finger on the pulse of America. Two families meet at the airport as they await the arrival of their Korean-born daughters. The Iranian American Yazdans immediately set about Americanizing their daughter, while the Donaldsons do everything to help their child keep her Korean heritage. Leaning on each other for support as their daughters grow, these families have all the quirks one expects from Tyler's novels--including love to be found in the place one least expects it. When love becomes conflict, when a second adopted daughter fails to live up to the perfection of the first, we see mothers clinging even more tightly to roots that can only be severed and causing what in the hands of a lesser novelist would be an irrevocable rift. This might not be Tyler at her best (e.g. The Accidental Tourist or the more recent Breathing Lessons), but listening to even a subdued Tyler is just plain fun, and Blair Brown is the perfect reader. For all collections.--Rochelle Ratner, formerly with Soho Weekly News, New York (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.

Excerpts

In what is perhaps her richest and most deeply searching novel, Anne Tyler gives us a story about what it is to be an American, and about Maryam Yazdan, who after thirty-five years in this country must finally come to terms with her "outsiderness." Two families, who would otherwise never have come together, meet by chance at the Baltimore airport--the Donaldsons and the Yazdans. Each couple is awaiting the arrival of an adopted infant daughter from Korea. After the babies from distant Asia are delivered, Bitsy Donaldson impulsively invites the Yazdans to celebrate with an "arrival party," an event that is repeated every year as the two families become more deeply intertwined. Anne Tyler was born in Minneapolis in 1941 but grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. This is her seventeenth novel; her eleventh, Breathing Lessons, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Baltimore. Blair Brown has appeared on Broadway in Arcadia, Cabaret, James Joyce's The Dead, and The Threepenny Opera, and won a Tony® Award for her performance in Copenhagen on Broadway. Favorite film credits include Dogville, Altered States, Continental Divide and A Flash of Green. She received an Ace Award and five Emmy® nominations for The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd. Excerpted from Digging to America by Anne Tyler All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.