JHUMPA LAHIRI

'Jhumpa Lahiri Vourvoulias' (born 'Nilanjana Sudeshna' in 1967) (Bengali: ঝুম্পা লাহিড়ী ''Jhumpa Lahiŗi'') is a contemporary Indian American author born in London, England and raised in South Kingstown, Rhode Island. She currently lives in New York City.

Contents

Background

Career

Interpreter of Maladies

The Namesake

Film

Awards

Bibliography

References

Notes

External links

Background

Jhumpa Lahiri was born in London, England in July 1967, and brought up in South Kingstown, Rhode Island. Brought up in America by a mother who wanted to raise her children to be Indian, she learned 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 has been a Vice President of the PEN American Center since 2005.

Career

Lahiri taught creative writing at Boston University and the Rhode Island School of Design. Much of her short fiction concerns the lives of Indian-Americans, particularly Bengalis.

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. It won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

The Namesake

''The Namesake'', her fifth 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 Calcutta, immigrated to the United States as young adults. Their children, Gogol and Sonia, 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.
One of the major themes of the book 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).

Film

★ The film, ''The Namesake'' was 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 protagonist Gogol, and features Bollywood stars Tabu and Irrfan Khan. Lahiri herself is an extra in the film.

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 - James Beard Foundation's M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award for "Indian Takeout" in ''Food & Wine Magazine''

★ 2002 - Guggenheim Fellowship

Bibliography

★ 1999 ''Interpreter of Maladies''

★ 2001 "Nobody's Business" (11 March 2001, ''The New Yorker'') ("The Best American Short Stories 2002")

★ 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

★ 2007 ''Samanami'', translated Bengali version of her The Namesake, published from Kolkata, India by Ananda Publishers - [1].

★ 2008 ''Unaccustomed Earth'' - [2]

References

★ Selvadurai, Shyam (ed.). "Jhumpa Lahiri: This Blessed House." ''Story-Wallah: A Celebration of South Asian Fiction.'' New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2005:391-410.

Notes

1. For Pulitzer winner Lahiri, a novel approach, ''USA Today''

External links

''Biographies'':

★ SAWNET biography

★ SAJA biography

★ Biography

★ Voices From the Gaps Biography

★
''Misc.'':

★ Lahiri in context of the Subcontinent

★ Barnard news about the Pulitzer

★ NPR Interview on Fresh Air

★ PBS interview about the Pulitzer

★ Research on Lahiri (Bibliographical Information)

★ Newsweek Article: My Two Lives