Jhumpa Lahiri

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Jhumpa Lahiri
Born 11 July 1967 (1967-07-11) (age 42)
London, England
Notable work(s) Interpreter of Maladies (1999)
Notable award(s) 1999 O. Henry Award
2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Jhumpa Lahiri (Bengali: ঝুম্পা লাহিড়ী; born on July 11, 1967) is an 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.[2]

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.[2][3] 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 places struggles, anxieties, and biases under her 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 immigrants 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 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 moves on to a scrutiny of the fate of the second and third generations. 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.

Contents

[edit] 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;[4] the protagonist of Lahiri's story "The Third and Final Continent" is based on her father.[5] Lahiri's mother wanted her children to grow up knowing of their Bengali heritage,[citation needed] and her family often visited relatives in Calcutta (now Kolkata).[6]

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".[4] 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.[4] Lahiri graduated from South Kingston 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 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 (and is 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).[7]

[edit] Literary career

During her six years at Boston University, Lahiri worked on short stories,[5] 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."[3] 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 won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (only the seventh time a story collection had won the award), and sold 600,000 copies.[4][10]

In 2003, Lahiri published The Namesake, her highly-anticipated first novel.[9] 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.[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."[11]

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

[edit] Novels

[edit] Short stories

  • "Nobody's Business" (12 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

[edit] References

  1. ^ "The Hum Inside the Skull, Revisited", The New York Times, 2005-01-16. Retrieved on 2008-04-12.
  2. ^ a b Chotiner, Isaac. "Interviews: Jhumpa Lahiri", The Atlantic, 2008-03-18. Retrieved on 2008-04-12.
  3. ^ a b Lahiri, Jhumpa. "My Two Lives", Newsweek, 2006-03-06. Retrieved on 2008-04-13.
  4. ^ a b c d e Minzesheimer, Bob. "For Pulitzer winner Lahiri, a novel approach", USA Today, 2003-08-19. Retrieved on 2008-04-13.
  5. ^ 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.
  6. ^ Aguiar, Arun. "One on One With Jhumpa Lahiri", Pifmagazine.com, 1999-07-28. Retrieved on 2008-04-13.
  7. ^ a b Anastas, Benjamin. "Books: Inspiring Adaptation", Men's Vogue, March 2007. Retrieved on 2008-04-13.
  8. ^ "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.
  9. ^ 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.
  10. ^ Farnsworth, Elizabeth. "Pulitzer Prize Winner-Fiction", PBS NewsHour, 2000-04-12. Retrieved on 2008-04-15.
  11. ^ 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

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