Themes and message

Immigration and fitting in

The main theme in the short story “The Jam Maker” by Huma Qureshi is immigration and the difficulties of fitting in when moving to a different country. The theme might also be phrased as integration. All three characters in the story illustrate this theme in different ways.

The narrator’s parents are Indian immigrants who moved to Britain. It is unknown whether the narrator herself was born in India or Britain. The mother and the father have very different attitudes to living in Britain, as the father is eager to fit in, while the mother is not interested in adopting habits from her new country and would like to keep her Indian identity.

It is clear from the start that the mother is homesick. The narrator once overhears her saying: “My heart is hurting here.” (l. 52). This points to how unhappy she is. She does not want to take part in any of the activities that the father and the narrator enjoy and prefers to remain in the house, isolating herself from the village and her family. She still dresses in the Indian w...