Jhumpa Lahiri
(Bengali: ?????? ???????; born on July 11, 1967) is an Indian American author. Lahiri's debut short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies
(1999), won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and her first novel, The Namesake
(2003), was adapted into the popular film of the same name. [1]
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Literary focus
Lahiri's writing is characterized by her "plain" language and her characters, often Indian immigrants to America who must navigate between the cultural values of their birthplace and their adopted home.
Lahiri's fiction is
autobiographical and frequently draws upon her own experiences as well as those of her parents, friends, acquaintances, and others in the
Bengali communities with which she is familiar. Lahiri examines her characters' struggles, anxieties, and biases to chronicle the nuances and details of immigrant psychology and behavior.
Until
Unaccustomed Earth
, she focused mostly on first-generation Indian American
immigrants and their struggle to raise a family in a country very different from theirs. Her stories describe their efforts to keep their children acquainted with
Indian culture and traditions and to keep them close even after they have grown up in order to hang on to the Indian tradition of a
joint family, in which the parents, their children and the children's families live under the same roof.
Unaccustomed Earth
departs from this earlier original ethos as Lahiri's characters embark on new stages of development. These
stories scrutinize the fate of the
second and third generations. As succeeding generations become increasingly
assimilated into American culture and are comfortable in constructing perspectives outside of their country of origin, Lahiri's fiction shifts to the needs of the individual. She shows how later generations depart from the constraints of their immigrant parents, who are often devoted to their community and their responsibility to other immigrants.
[3]
Personal life and education
Lahiri was born in
London, the daughter of
Bengali Indian immigrants. Her family moved to the
United States when she was three; Lahiri considers herself an American, stating,
"I wasn't born here, but I might as well have been."
[4] Lahiri grew up in
Kingston,
Rhode Island, where her father worked as a librarian at the
University of Rhode Island;
he is the basis for the protagonist in "The Third and Final Continent," the closing story from
Interpreter of Maladies
.
[5] Lahiri's mother wanted her children to grow up knowing their
Bengali heritage, and her family often visited relatives in Calcutta (now
Kolkata).
[6]
When she began kindergarten in
Kingston, New York Lahiri's teacher decided to call her by her
pet name, Jhumpa, because it was easier to pronounce than her "good names".
Lahiri recalled,
"I always felt so embarrassed by my name.... You feel like you're causing someone pain just by being who you are."
[7] Lahiri's ambivalence over her identity was the inspiration for the ambivalence of Gogol, the protagonist of her novel
The Namesake,
over his unusual name.
Lahiri graduated from
South Kingstown High School, and received her B.A. in English literature from
Barnard College in 1989.
[8]
Lahiri then received multiple degrees from
Boston University: an M.A. in English, an M.A. in Creative Writing, an M.A. in Comparative Literature and a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies. She took a fellowship at Provincetown's
Fine Arts Work Center, which lasted for the next two years (1997–1998). Lahiri has taught creative writing at
Boston University and the
Rhode Island School of Design.
In 2001, Lahiri married Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush, a journalist who was then Deputy Editor of
TIME Latin America (and now Executive Editor of
El Diario/La Prensa, New York's largest Spanish daily and America's fastest growing newspaper). Lahiri lives in
Brooklyn,
New York with her husband and their two children, Octavio (b. 2002) and Noor (b. 2005).
Literary career
During her six years at Boston University, Lahiri worked on short stories,
nine of which were collected in her debut book,
Interpreter of Maladies
(1999). The stories address sensitive dilemmas in the lives of Indians or Indian immigrants, with themes such as marital difficulties, miscarriages, and the disconnection between first and second generation United States immigrants. Lahiri later wrote,
"When I first started writing I was not conscious that my subject was the Indian-American experience. What drew me to my craft was the desire to force the two worlds I occupied to mingle on the page as I was not brave enough, or mature enough, to allow in life."
The collection was praised by American critics, but received mixed reviews in India, where reviewers were alternately enthusiastic and upset Lahiri had "not paint[ed] Indians in a more positive light."
[9] Interpreter of Maladies
sold 600,000 copies and received the 2000
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (only the seventh time a story collection had won the award).
In 2003, Lahiri published
The Namesake
, her first
novel.
The story spans over thirty years in the life of the Ganguli family. The Calcutta-born parents emigrated as young adults to the United States, where their children, Gogol and Sonia, grow up experiencing the constant generational and cultural gap with their parents. A
film adaptation of
The Namesake
was released in March 2007, directed by
Mira Nair and starring
Kal Penn as Gogol and Bollywood stars
Tabu and
Irrfan Khan as his parents.
Lahiri's second collection of short stories,
Unaccustomed Earth
, was released on
April 1,
2008. Upon its publication,
Unaccustomed Earth
achieved the rare distinction of debuting at number 1 on
The New York Times
best seller list.
[11] New York Times
Book Review editor Dwight Garner stated, "It’s hard to remember the last genuinely serious, well-written work of fiction — particularly a book of stories — that leapt straight to No. 1; it’s a powerful demonstration of Lahiri’s newfound commercial clout."
Since 2005, Lahiri has been a Vice President of the
PEN American Center, an organization designed to promote friendship and intellectual cooperation among writers.
Bibliography
Short story collections
- Interpreter of Maladies
(1999)
- Unaccustomed Earth
(2008)
Novels
Short stories
- "Nobody's Business" (12 March 2001, The New Yorker
) ("The Best American Short Stories 2002")
- (24 May 2004, The New Yorker
)
- (1 May 2006, The New Yorker
)
- "Year's End" (24 December 2007, The New Yorker
)
Awards
- 1993 — TransAtlantic Award from the Henfield Foundation
- 1999 — O. Henry Award for short story "Interpreter of Maladies"
- 1999 — PEN/Hemingway Award (Best Fiction Debut of the Year) for "Interpreter of Maladies"
- 1999 — "Interpreter of Maladies" selected as one of Best American Short Stories
- 2000 — Addison Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters
- 2000 — The New Yorker
s Best Debut of the Year for "Interpreter of Maladies"
- 2000 — Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her debut Interpreter of Maladies
- 2000 — James Beard Foundation's M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award for "Indian Takeout" in Food & Wine Magazine
- 2002 — Guggenheim Fellowship
- 2002 - "Nobody's Business" selected as one of Best American Short Stories
- 2008 - Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award for "Unaccustomed Earth"
Contributions
- (Introduction) The Magic Barrel: Stories
by Bernard Malamud, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, July 2003.
- (Introduction) Malgudi Days
by R.K. Narayan, Penguin Classics, August 2006.
- "Rhode Island" (essay), State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America
edited by Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey, Ecco, September 16, 2008
References
- Chotiner, Isaac. "Interviews: Jhumpa Lahiri", The Atlantic, 2008-03-18. Retrieved on 2008-04-12.
- Lahiri, Jhumpa. "My Two Lives", Newsweek, 2006-03-06. Retrieved on 2008-04-13.
- Lahiri, J.. Unaccustomed Earth.
- Minzesheimer, Bob. "For Pulitzer winner Lahiri, a novel approach", USA Today, 2003-08-19. Retrieved on 2008-04-13.
- Flynn, Gillian. "Passage To India: First-time author Jhumpa Lahiri nabs a Pulitzer", Entertainment Weekly, 2000-04-28. Retrieved on 2008-04-13.
- Aguiar, Arun. "One on One With Jhumpa Lahiri", Pifmagazine.com, 1999-07-28. Retrieved on 2008-04-13.
- Anastas, Benjamin. "Books: Inspiring Adaptation", Men's Vogue, March 2007. Retrieved on 2008-04-13.
- "Pulitzer Prize awarded to Barnard alumna Jhumpa Lahiri ’89; Katherine Boo ’88 cited in public service award to The Washington Post", Barnard Campus News, 2000-04-11. Retrieved on 2008-04-13.
- Wiltz, Teresa. "The Writer Who Began With a Hyphen: Jhumpa Lahiri, Between Two Cultures", The Washington Post, 2003-10-08. Retrieved on 2008-04-15.
- Farnsworth, Elizabeth. "Pulitzer Prize Winner-Fiction", PBS NewsHour, 2000-04-12. Retrieved on 2008-04-15.
- Garner, Dwight. "Jhumpa Lahiri, With a Bullet" The New York Times Paper Cuts blog, 2008-04-10. Retrieved on 2008-04-12.