Jhumpa Lahiri
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Jhumpa Lahiri Vourvoulias (born Nilanjana Sudeshna in 1967) (Bengali: ঝুম্পা লাহিড়ী Jhumpa Lahiŗi) is a contemporary Indian American (Bengali) author based in New York City.
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[edit] Background
Jhumpa Lahiri was born in London, England in July 1967, and brought up in South Kingstown, Rhode Island. Her parents, a teacher and a librarian, taught her about her Bengali heritage from an early age. Lahiri received her B.A. in English literature from Barnard College in 1989. She 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).
In 2001, she married Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush, a journalist who was then Deputy Editor of Time Latin America. Lahiri currently lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children. She is a Vice President of the PEN American Center since 2005.
[edit] Career
Lahiri taught creative writing at Boston University and Rhode Island School of Design. Much of her short fiction concerns the lives of Indian-Americans, particularly Bengalis.
[edit] Interpreter of Maladies
As a collection of nine distinct short stories, Interpreter of Maladies, Lahiri's debut, addresses sensitive dilemmas in the lives of Indians or Indian immigrants. The stories' themes include marital difficulties, miscarriages, and the disconnection between first and second generation immigrants in the United States. The stories are set in the northeastern United States, and in India, particularly Calcutta.
[edit] The Namesake
The Namesake, her second book and first novel, was published in 2003. An anecdote published in USA Today mentions a schoolteacher who found her given name too long and used her nickname Jhumpa instead.[1] Lahiri adapted this incident in her book, which spans more than thirty years in the life of a fictional family, the Gangulis. The parents, each born in Kolkata, emigrated to the United States as young adults. Their children, Gogol and Sonali, grow up in the United States and much of the tension of the novel is dependent upon the generation and cultural gap between the parents and the children.
Furthermore, as the title suggests, one of the issues of the novel is the confusion caused by the a misunderstanding which occurred when Gogol is very young: his pet name (Gogol) becomes mistaken for his real name. Thus, Gogol's unusual name serves as a symbol of his own unclear cultural identity (further complicated by the fact that Gogol is the last name of a noted Russian author).
[edit] Film
- The film, The Namesake will be released in March 2007 in the United States and the United Kingdom. It is directed by Mira Nair and a screenplay adapted from Lahiri's novel by Sooni Taraporevala. The film stars Kal Penn as the young Gogol. Lahiri, herself, will make a cameo appearance in the film as Aunt Jhumpa.
[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"
- 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"
- short story "Interpreter of Maladies" selected as one of Best American Short Stories
- 2000 - Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her debut Interpreter of Maladies
- 2000 - M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award from the James Beard Foundation
- 2002 - Guggenheim Fellowship
[edit] Bibliography
- 1999 Interpreter of Maladies
- 2001 "Nobody's Business" (11 March 2001, The New Yorker)
- 2003 The Namesake
- 2004 "Hell-Heaven" (24 May 2004, The New Yorker) - full text
- 2006 "Once In A Lifetime" (1 May 2006, The New Yorker) - full text
[edit] References
- Selvadurai, Shyam (ed.). "Jhumpa Lahiri: This Blessed House." Story-Wallah: A Celebration of South Asian Fiction. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2005:391-410.
[edit] Notes
- ^ For Pulitzer winner Lahiri, a novel approach, USA Today
[edit] External links
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