This week we are going to read the short story collection Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, which tells us the immigrant experiences of Indian Americans. To make you have a better understanding of the content of the Interpreter of Maladies, I will provide some historical backgrounds and life experiences of Jhumpa Lahiri to strengthen your understanding of the story.
Jhumpa Lahiri, born July 11, 1967, in Lindon, was an American writer. She was the daughter of Indian immigrants. Her family immigrated to the United States when she was three years old. Lahiri’s career as a writer did not plain sailing. Her early short stories faced rejection from publishers for many years. Her first short story collection, the Interpreter of Maladies, was published in 1999. Many of her works contained the theme of reflecting the lives of Indians and Indian immigrants. The Interpreter of Maladies represented how the intersecting identities or dual cultural identities affected people’s behaviors, how immigration influenced people’s sense of cultural belonging, and the difficulties she encountered when she wanted to communicate across these two cultures, by using her experience as a second-generation Indian American. For example, we can know that there was a cultural gap between Mrs. Das and Mr. Kapasi from their conversation in the story. The status or identity of Mrs. Das just like the identity of Lahiri made her originate from Indian but filled with American culture. Lahiri often made interviews with others in the Bengali community and collect their life experience to shape the characters in her story. That was the reason why her story was commented on as revealing of Indian Americans’ experiences and immigration influences.
Understanding the context of massive Indian immigrants was also significant. As said in the website, Immigration to the United States, with the sign of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 by President Lyndon B. Johnson and the passage of the Immigration Act of 1900, which made immigrants with high technology skills, advanced degrees, and professional talents had the priority to immigrate, which caused India has a massive brain drain. Indian Americans have become the fourth-largest immigrant community in the United States.
References
Asian Indian immigrants. (n.d.). Retrieved October 24, 2020, from https://immigrationtounitedstates.org/360-asian-indian-immigrants.html.
Leyda, Julia. An Interview with Jhumpa Lahiri. Contemporary Women’s Writing. January 2010, www.researchgate.net/publication/249294035_An_Interview_with_Jhumpa_Lahiri.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jhumpa_Lahiri