The Namesake By Jumpa Lahiri

Jumpa Lahiri has done it again. After her marvelous debut short story collection titled

Interpreter Of Maldies, she has delivered The Namesake (now a Hollywood movie as well). If

anyone had any doubt her talent after reading Interpreter Of Maladies, they would be surely

removed once they finish The Namesake. The way she builds her characters early in the novel

through short story type episodes and then weaves unexpected turns of events all through the

novel is truly amazing and refreshing to read in today’s fiction writing.

Ashima and Ashoke Ganguli are immigrants to Boston from India when they give birth to their

son. Their son ends up with the name of Gogul, just because his "good name" never arrives from

his grandmother in India. Gogul hates his name and grows up as American as he can while his

parents stick to their Bengali past. The unfortunate Gogol is tethered to this dual Indian-American

life, never quite fitting anywhere. At first he shifts to Americanization, pushing aside the Indian

rituals. But after a number of relationship failures and some few successes, Gogol is attracted to

the comfort of his heritage. His perspective changes dramatically over the course of events,

especially when he sets a bond with his father as well as the name given to him.

Jhumpa Lahiri has written a wonderful novel about immigrant lives, families, and bonds that can

never be broken. Gogol’s story is actually a simple one, as lived by many Indians in America.

This is surely one of the best ones in recent times

http://enjoy-books.blogspot.com/2008/03/namesake-by-jumpa-lahiri.html<12,january 2009><POSTED BY AKSHAYA SAXENA AT 3/29/2008 11:41:00 PM   >

Jhumpa Lahiri

BornNilanjana Sudeshna11 July 1967 (age 41)London, England

Notable work(s) Interpreter of Maladies (1999)

Notable award(s)1999 O. Henry Award2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Jhumpa Lahiri (IPA: /ˈdʒuːm.pʌ lʌˈhɪər.iː/[2]) (born Nilanjana Sudeshna on 11 July 1967) (Bengali: ঝু�ম্পা� লা�হি�ড়ী Jhumpa Lahiŗi) is an American author of Bengali Indian descent. 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.[3]

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.[3][4] 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 inserts struggles, anxieties, and biases under a microscope so as to better chronicle the nuances and details of immigrant psychology and behavior. No gesture, no sorrow is spared in her examinations. Until Unaccustomed Earth, her concerns were confined, for the most part, to Indian emigrant parents to America and their struggle to raise a family in a country very different from theirs. She wrote about first-generation immigrant parents' struggles to keep their children acquainted with the Indian culture and traditions. She wrote about how the parents struggle to keep their children close to them even after they have grown up in order to hang on to the Indian tradition of a joint family, where the parents, their children and the children’s family live under the same roof. In her recent Unaccustomed Earth, she steps forward to a scrutiny of the fate of the second generation and their children. As succeeding generations become increasingly assimilated into Western culture and are comfortable in constructing global perspectives, Lahiri's fiction shifts to the needs of the individual. The readers sees more clearly the departure of the second and following generations from the constraints of their parents. The latter were especially devoted to community and their responsibility to other immigrants; in Unaccustomed Earth there is a departure from the original ethos, and Lahiri's characters embark on paths marked by alienation and self-obsession.

[edit] Personal life and education

Lahiri was born in London, the daughter of 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."[5] Lahiri grew up in Kingston, Rhode Island, where her father worked as a librarian at the University of Rhode Island;[5] the protagonist of Lahiri's story "The Third and Final Continent" is based on her father. [6] Lahiri's mother wanted her children to grow up knowing of their Bengali heritage,[citation needed] and her family often visited relatives in Calcutta, India.[7]

When she began kindergarten in Kingston, Lahiri's teacher decided to call her by her pet name, Jhumpa, because it was easier to pronounce than her "good names". [5] Lahiri recalled, "I

always felt so embarrassed by my name...You feel like you're causing someone pain just by being who you are."[8] 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.[5] Lahiri graduated from South Kingstown High School, and received her B.A. in English literature from Barnard College in 1989.[9]

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 up a fellowship at Provincetown's Fine Arts Work Center, which lasted for the next two years (1997–1998). Lahiri 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. Lahiri lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and their two children, Octavio (b. 2002) and Noor (b. 2005).[8]

[edit] Literary career

During her six years at Boston University, Lahiri worked on short stories, [6] 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."[4] 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."[10] Interpreter of Maladies won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for fiction (only the seventh time a story collection had won the award), and sold 600,000 copies.[11][5]

In 2003, Lahiri published The Namesake, her highly-anticipated first novel.[10] The book spans more than thirty years in the life of a fictional family, the Gangulis. The Calcutta-born parents immigrated to the United States as young adults, and their children, Gogol and Sonia, grow up in the United States experiencing the constant generational and cultural gap between their parents and them. 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 on The New York Times best seller list in the number 1 slot.[12] 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."[12]

Since 2005, Lahiri has been a Vice President of the PEN American Center, an organization designed to promote friendship and intellectual cooperation among writers.

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Short story collections

Interpreter of Maladies (1999) Unaccustomed Earth (2008)

[edit] Novels

The Namesake (2003)

[edit] Short stories

"Nobody's Business" (11 March 2001, The New Yorker) ("The Best American Short Stories 2002")

"Hell-Heaven" (24 May 2004, The New Yorker) "Once In A Lifetime" (1 May 2006, The New Yorker) "Year's End" (24 December 2007, The New Yorker)

[edit] 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"

[edit] 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.

[edit] References

1. ̂ "The Hum Inside the Skull, Revisited", The New York Times, 2005-01-16. Retrieved on 2008-04-12.

2. ̂ See inogolo:pronunciation of Jhumpa Lahiri. 3. ^ a b Chotiner, Isaac. "Interviews: Jhumpa Lahiri", The Atlantic, 2008-03-18. Retrieved

on 2008-04-12. 4. ^ a b Lahiri, Jhumpa. "My Two Lives", Newsweek, 2006-03-06. Retrieved on 2008-04-13. 5. ^ a b c d e Minzesheimer, Bob. "For Pulitzer winner Lahiri, a novel approach", USA Today,

2003-08-19. Retrieved on 2008-04-13.

6. ^ a b Flynn, Gillian. "Passage To India: First-time author Jhumpa Lahiri nabs a Pulitzer", Entertainment Weekly, 2000-04-28. Retrieved on 2008-04-13.

7. ̂ Aguiar, Arun. "One on One With Jhumpa Lahiri", Pifmagazine.com, 1999-07-28. Retrieved on 2008-04-13.

8. ^ a b Anastas, Benjamin. "Books: Inspiring Adaptation", Men's Vogue, March 2007. Retrieved on 2008-04-13.

9. ̂ "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.

10. ^ a b 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.

11. ̂ Farnsworth, Elizabeth. "Pulitzer Prize Winner-Fiction", PBS NewsHour, 2000-04-12. Retrieved on 2008-04-15.

12. ^ a b Garner, Dwight. "Jhumpa Lahiri, With a Bullet" The New York Times Paper Cuts blog, 2008-04-10. Retrieved on 2008-04-12.

[edit] External links

Literature portal Official Website: www.jhumpalahiri.net

Biographies:

Jhumpa Lahiri at The Steven Barclay Agency SAWNET biography SAJA biography Biography Voices From the Gaps Biography

Misc.:

Lahiri in context of the Subcontinent NPR Interview on Fresh Air Research on Lahiri (Bibliographical Information)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jhumpa_Lahiri"