Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies(Week 12 Context Presentation)

As the author is of Indian descent, born in Britain, grows up in Rhode Island, USA, and now lives in New York, she integrates her own experience and understanding of growth and life into her creation. A common main line runs through nine unrelated stories in the novel collection. This mainly focuses on the life of Indians in foreign countries. The contradictions between different races and cultures are discussed in the stories.

Navigating between the Indian traditions they’ve inherited and the baffling new world, the characters in Jhumpa Lahiri’s elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations. In “A Temporary Matter,” published in The New Yorker, a young Indian-American couple faces the heartbreak of a stillborn birth while their Boston neighborhood copes with a nightly blackout. In the title story, an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors and hears an astonishing confession. Lahiri writes with deft cultural insight reminiscent of Anita Desai and a nuanced depth that recalls Mavis Gallant. She is an important and powerful new voice.

The Interpreter of Maladies is not only the title of the book, but also that of one of the nine short stories in the collection. In each of the nine stories, Lahiri presents characters who find themselves out of place, lost, or even rejected by the community in the case of Bibi Haldar. Among the stories, Mr. Kapasi is the literal “interpreter of maladies,” translating the symptoms described by patients to a doctor who does not speak the same Indian dialect. However, Lahiri makes the reader the figurative “interpreter of maladies” as she weaves the short stories of her characters and their plights. Each of us as readers interprets their plights differently, thus left up to “interpretation.”

Nowadays, Indian Americans are becoming more and more important in the United States. In recent decades, the group of overseas Indian Americans in the United States has been growing. Especially after the introduction of the new immigration act in 1965, Indian Americans have become the second largest Asian ethnic group after Chinese Americans. Indian Americans engaged in management and other professional and technical categories account for a high proportion of all ethnic groups, and the average family income has always been the first in the United States, Indians are also one of the most economically successful ethnic groups. The advantage of language makes Indian immigrants integrate into American society without obstacles. Indian Americans are realizing their American dream and becoming leaders in all fields. They have become one of the most dynamic, high-income, professional and integrated into the mainstream society. What’s more incredible is that it took them only a generation to reach this height since the 1960s. In less than 50 days of his presidency, Biden has appointed at least 55 Indian-Americans to key leadership positions in his administration ranging from his writer to the NASA, to almost every wing of the government.

References:

https://www.sparknotes.com/short-stories/interpreter-of-maladies/section2/