The Fictional World Of Jhumpa Lahiri A Study In Merging Identities

This book examines Jhumpa Lahiri as an author interested in non- gender-specific issues such as immigration, identity, alienation, and diaspora addressed in the domain of postcolonial theory, by highlighting marginality, alienation, and nostalgia as the three chief features in her writings testifying to a sensibility that remains compulsively subsumed in her family’s ethnic heritage and the lives of South Asian immigrants in the United States. The study explains how her search for the self and national identity merged in two cultures and two nations perforce crystallize the “metaphors of her own creative consciousness.

In nine stories imbued with the sensual details of Indian culture, Lahiri charts the emotional journeys of characters seeking love beyond the barriers of nations and generations.

Diaspora, a movement of the people and cultures, has generated writers not just to shape new identities for themselves but for others too and writers like Bharati Mukherjee, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and Jhumpa Lahiri have not only explored the concept but have set trends to acknowledge and assimilate the changing perceptions. Staying away from their original homelands and sharing common experiences the immigrants have innumerable accounts to narrate and the writers have taken up the pen to articulate various occurrences through words. Based not on any theory or philosophy but just on the life experiences of immigrants, Diasporic literature has touched the hearts of the readers and there has been a poignant emotional impact.

This study is a new exploration of Lahiri’s fiction through the lens of postmodern aesthetics with reference to the main text The Lowland and the secondary text The Namesake. The Lowland is a narrative of home, displacement and a vague attempt of resettlement in a new world, yet the prime objective of this thesis is to explore how the desire to break with the barriers of tragic past and seeking survival in another world gives a new perspective of Diaspora. The Lowland and The Namesake explore the aesthetics of displacement, rather than touching upon the pains of displacement and dislocation. It is not the existence in the new world which causes the disaster of individuals; rather it is the tragic past which destroys their lives totally. Moreover the rejection of old habits, traditions and conditioning, and a merging with the culture of the new context is an existing issue of the post modern transcultural world. The new world not only offers professional opportunity and financial betterment, but also provides a chance to obliviate the haunted memories of the tragic past. And immigration or displacement is a kind of rebirth in a new culture. The feeling of home is like something haunting and dark which frightens the people. Their quest of survival in a transcultural world, and their will to sacrifice their relations for that reason is an insight into situations of fast changing social fabric in India. This research explores how the male and the female agency works in order to build an individual identity, and it constructs individual realities based on personal experiences of the old world and the changing perceptions of the new world.

With a new afterword from Jhumpa Lahiri, a new edition of the contemporary classic. "Dazzling...An intimate, closely observed family portrait."--The New York Times "Hugely appealing."--People Magazine "An exquisitely detailed family saga."--Entertainment Weekly Meet the Ganguli family, new arrivals from Calcutta, trying their best to become Americans even as they pine for home. The name they bestow on their firstborn, Gogol, betrays all the conflicts of honoring tradition in a new world--conflicts that will haunt Gogol on his own winding path through divided loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. In The Namesake, the Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri brilliantly illuminates the immigrant experience and the tangled ties between generations.

This research explores how the desire to break with the barriers of tragic past and seeking survival in another world gives a new perspective to Diaspora. It is not the existence in the new world which causes the disaster of individuals; rather it is the tragic past which destroys their lives totally. Moreover, the rejection of old habits, traditions and conditioning, and a merging with the culture of the new context is an existing issue of the postmodern transcultural world. The feeling of home is like something haunting and dark which frightens the people. Their quest of survival in a transcultural world, and their will to sacrifice their relations for that reason is an insight into situations of fast changing social fabric in India. The male and the female agency works in order to build an individual identity, and it constructs individual realities based on personal experiences. the old world and the changing perceptions of the new world.

Beginning in America, and spilling back over memories and generations to India, Unaccustomed Earth explores the heart of family life and the immigrant experience. Eight luminous stories - longer and richer than any Jhumpa Lahiri has yet written - take us from America to Europe, India and Thailand as they follow new lives forged in the wake of loss.

Each story in this series offers a poignant glimpse of family life – the ties we cling to; the ties we try to sever; and the ties that make us who we are. Told from a myriad of perspectives, from a dazzling array of some of the finest short story writers of our generation (including Jhumpa Lahiri, George Saunders, Jon McGregor and Elizabeth Gilbert), Family Snapshots gives us a fresh, empathetic and moving insight into the meaning of family. Only Goodness is taken from Jhumpa Lahiri's dazzling collection of stories, Unaccustomed Earth.

This book offers captivating insights into the interaction between the Indian and the American cultural worlds. A fascinating work of research, it illustrates an extraordinary capacity to employ the details of literary texts as significant clues in understanding the configuration of transcultural identities. The book constructs an exciting dialogue between complex theoretical notions and the vibrant fictional worlds populated by Indian, American and European characters. Its original and multi-layered approach illustrates how complex theories of culture can help the reader understand contemporary processes of migration, cultural change and gender identity that interfere with daily life.