Special thanks to amaranthinepoetry for recommending Jhumpa Lahiri to discuss!
❝That's the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.❞
-- Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake
English-born American novelist and short-story writer, Nilanjana Sudeshna "Jhumpa" Lahiri whose stories focus on the immigrant experience, particular that of East Indians. Lahiri was born on July 11, 1967 in London, England; her mother Tapati and her father Amar, a Bengali couple who immigrated to the United Kingdom from Calcutta, India. Her father opted, with his job as university librarian, to relocate to the United States for work, living in South Kingstown, Rhode Island when Lahiri was young. In 1989, she graduated with a B.A. in English literature from Barnard college. She also obtained three master's degrees (in English, creative writing, and comparative literature and arts) and a doctorate (in Renaissance studies) from Boston University in 1990s.
Her first book debuted in 1999 where it was nine short story collection tilted, Interpreter of Maladies. Each story's setting was in Calcutta and other locations on the U.S. East Coast. The stories' themes focuses on practice of arrange marriage, alienation, dislocation, and loss of culture and provides insight to the experiences of Indian immigrants as well as the lives Calcuttans. Interpreter of Maladies won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the 2000 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction.
In 2003, Lahiri wrote a novel, The Namesake; the theme focuses on personal identity and the conflicts produced by immigration by following the internal dynamics of a Bengali family in the United States. Five years later, short story Unaccustomed Earth was published and reached #1 on the New York Times' best-seller list. She was presented a 2014 National Humanities Medal by U.S. Pres. Barack Obama in 2015. She has published seven books in total, recently wrote an Italian Dove mi trovo in 2018.
Discussion Questions:
The main theme within Jhumpa Lahiri's works are personal identity and the sensation of belong, how does that affect you as the reader? What thoughts or questions arise?
As a writer, what element or prose technique do you admire and want to learn?
Always open to additional questions and comments on about Jhumpa Lahiri and her works.
If there is another author you would like to see a discussion on, please post your suggestion in the comments below for a chance to be featured in a future chapter!
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