When I started doing research on what to write my presentation on, I keep coming back to the history of the Jhumpa Lahiri. As a reader, I think knowing the history of the author helps understand their writing better.
Jhumpa was born in London England, to a librarian and schoolteacher hailing from the state of West Bengal in Idina. Her family would later move to Kingston, Rhode Island when she was just three years old. Growing up, Lahiri’s mother wanted her children to know their Bengal culture. Which lead to Lahiri feeling pressure to be a part of both worlds, and as if both sides where fighting with each other. She would unknowingly go on to write her first published work, Interpreter of Maladies, about the struggles of life as an Indian American immigrant. Her original intent when she first started writing this collection of stories was to merge the two dualling sides of her identity. Something she was too afraid to do in her real life. Also, in this work there is the story, “The Third and Final Continent,” where the model for the protagonist is her own father. The “Interpreter of Maladies” would go on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2000. Lahiri’s other works have also gone on to win a myriad of other awards throughout her career as well.
Below is a video from The New Yorker of Lahiri taking about her writing.
Encyclopedia Britannica. “Jhumpa Lahiri.” Encyclopedia Britannica, Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 7 July 2020, www.britannica.com/biography/Jhumpa-Lahiri.
Wikipedia. “Jhumpa Lahiri.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 26 Aug. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jhumpa_Lahiri.
“Jhumpa Lahiri.” Jhumpa Lahiri | Steven Barclay Agency, Steven Barclay Agency, barclayagency.com/speakers/jhumpa-lahiri/.
Thank you for including this informative post about the author! It really helps give more of a background meaning to the short stories.
I liked her thoughts on the universality of human experience, no matter who and where…. “Maybe we’re less divided than we think”
Thanks for your sharing! Your post provides a solid background for me to read the materials. The video really helps me to better understand the writing and what it happened when it was created.
This was really interesting and informative. Thanks.
I enjoyed reading this context presentation because it informed me of the struggles people encounter with cultural assimilation. This was very prominent in Lisa Ko’s reading when Deming was adopted by the American family. Adapting to an environment is a very challenging thing to do, and leaving behind your bloodline culture is even more difficult. Lahiri focuses on the similarities between cultures and I think it was a very informative reading. Thank you for the video as well, it helped me stay engaged.
Great post! I thought it was especially interesting how you focused on Lahiri’s struggle with her identity and clash between two worlds, just like we saw with Deming in The Leavers. Additionally, I thought the video of Lahiri talking about her own writing really helped me to understand some of her motivations as an author, which I believe will provide me with a better understanding of this week’s material.
Thanks for your informative post! I get a good background information of Jhumpa from here
Thanks for posting this! I really enjoyed reading Lahiri’s work. I hadn’t looked into her own personal life and more details about her and I found this very interesting. Her stories really demonstrate the difficulties of Indian Immigrants.
Very informative post thank you for the read! It was interesting to learn more about her and her life. I thought it was very interesting to read the obstacles Indian immigrants have to navigate through.
Thank you for posting this! I often find it helpful to hear a little bit of the artist’s own voice when reading their work. Hearing a little bit about her thought process, or in this case non-process, is really helpful to reading her work.
Hi, nice post! The video was really informative and it was cool learning about her life. It gave us an idea of how diccfult it is to be an immigrant from India and see all the struggles she faced.
Thank you so much for giving insight on this! I think that it is usually very helpful to give context about a time period with our readings, but it is so good and refreshing to learn more about the author! This definitely helped me to understand the basis of these stories.
This post was very informative. Adding the video was kind of more helpful to learn more about the author. She explores key factors culture plays during assimilation into another society.
Thank you for sharing to help me understand the background of the story and let me know that it is reallyly difficult for India to immigrate.
This was very informative. Thank you very much. I learned a lot about the author as well as cultural assimilation from the video. Great job!
Thank you for posting this! I really enjoy reading Lahiri. It’s interesting to learn more about her and her life and I haven’t studied her personal life or more details about her. Her story does illustrate the difficulties of Indian immigration. I found it interesting to read about the obstacles Indian immigrants have to overcome.
Good post. I think you did a really good job of researching and providing background information on Jhumpa Lahiri. It was interesting to read her story and watch the video.
Very good article!! Was very informative on the short stories giving us background on the info we discussed in class!!
Great presentation! I also agree that learning the background of the author helps understand the reading. I appreciate that you clearly relate Jhumpa’s personal experience to her writing.
Great presentation! I also agree that learning the background of the author helps understand the reading. I appreciate that you clearly relate Jhumpa’s personal experience to her writing.