Context Research Presentation

WEEK 10: Interpreter oF Maladies

Globalization increases diversity and spreads culture through immigration. The population flow gives birth to a group of children “who look back to their parents’ homeland at a generational remove and come to terms with the ongoing presence in their lives of a “home” country very different from the one in which they have grown up.” In the Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri presents her depiction of these concerns through stories. Jhumpa Lahiri was born in London in 1967, the daughter of Indian immigrants from the Indian state of West Bengal. Lahiri moved to the US with her family when she was only three years old and grew up in Kingston, Rhode Island. As an Indian immigrant, Lahiri is part of that unique group of children who observe their parents’ home more like a stranger.

In 1999, Lahiri published the Interpreter of Maladies whose stories center around the dilemmas in the lives of Indians or Indian immigrants. She includes various themes such as the marriage issues, the disconnection between American immigrants’ generations, and young immigrant generations’ confusion about their original homeland. The Interpreter of Maladies consists of nine stories set in either India or America. Most of them relate to the second-generation Indian-American rather than immigrants themselves. Jhumpa Lahiri had said that “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.” When I read the the Interpreter of Maladies, I always behold the conscious of the connection between cultures, there are many questions based on issues of identity and representation worth considering.

Set the story “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine” as an example. The story is told from the girl Liliya’s perspective, whose parents are Indian immigrants. Mr. Pirzada is a regular visitor to Liliya’s family who has a wife and seven daughters living in Dacca. Lahiri’s depiction of Liliya’s pray for Mr. Pirzada and her naïve question about India and its surrounding territorial disputes reveals her disconnection with her origin homeland. She prays and comforts Mr. Pirzada just like she is observing a disaster has no relation to her life. Liliya has empathy for what Mr. Pirzada has suffered but fails to realize the point that the suffering comes from her original homeland.