Bengali vs. American Culture in Unaccustomed Earth

Unaccustomed Earth is the second novel I've read by Jhumpa Lahiri (The first one being The Namesake, which I also enjoyed) - both focus heavily on the experiences of Bengali immigrants/expatriates. As an American whose family has a history in this country hundreds of years back, I tend to think of America's culture in raising kids, marriages, and dress as the default- and since I have not traveled much outside of America and Europe, I'm not exposed to many noticeable differences in cultures and mannerisms. Unaccustomed Earth, besides carrying eight insightful, beautiful stories, also does a wonderful job of portraying Lahiri's perception of her family's culture- A large trend I noticed is that all of the parent's in the stories were married through an arranged marriage, which is not common if at all practiced in the states. In Once in A Lifetime, Hema's mother's practice of having Hema sleep in a cot in her mother's room up until 5th grade- while reminiscing on how she shared a bed with her parents until she married shows another cultural difference, assuming how plainly she stated this implied the normalcy of it in Calcutta. Dress is another difference portrayed in the book: Most often the mothers of the main characters in the stories moved to America after being married, however, retained their traditional dress, wearing Saris, bindis, and using vermillion powder in their hair- a practice I learned through research shows a woman's married status. Aside from a ring, there is no obvious way to tell if an American woman is married, and the cultural difference is shown in this projection of marriage status. There are several more differences portrayed in the book, and this only describes a few- after all, a whole culture cannot be summed up in a single paragraph.