Jhumpa speaks

'Interview' with Jhumpa Lahiri:

Q) The Namesake deals with Indian immigrants in the United States as well as their children. What, in your opinion, distinguishes the experiences of the former from the latter?

A) In a sense, very little. The question of identity is always a difficult one, but especially so for those who are culturally displaced, as immigrants are, or those who grow up in two worlds simultaneously, as is the case for their children. The older I get, the more I am aware that I have somehow inherited a sense of exile from my parents, even though in many ways I am so much more American than they are. In fact, it is still very hard to think of myself as an American. (This is of course complicated by the fact that I was born in London.) I think that for immigrants, the challenges of exile, the loneliness, the constant sense of alienation, the knowledge of and longing for a lost world, are more explicit and distressing than for their children. On the other hand, the problem for the children of immigrants — those with strong ties to their country of origin — is that they feel neither one thing nor the other. This has been my experience, in any case. For example, I never know how to answer the question "Where are you from?" If I say I'm from Rhode Island, people are seldom satisfied. They want to know more, based on things such as my name, my appearance, etc. Alternatively, if I say I'm from India, a place where I was not born and have never lived, this is also inaccurate. It bothers me less now. But it bothered me growing up, the feeling that there was no single place to which I fully belonged.

Lahiri is one of my favorite authors; I impatiently wait for her to publish a third work.

It's interesting to me that she doesn't know how to answer the question, and then that she answers it the way she does. Q-Where are you from? A-Why?

Also, which single place do you fully belong? Wherever you want to.

That's the great thing about being an immigrant or the kid of one--you get to decide. Doesn't matter if you don't feel 100% one way or the other; people in life very rarely feel totally committed to anything. It's okay to feel multiple ways about something; probably healthy, actually, shows you're aware and thoughtful.

Let's not make things more complicated than they are. Compared to billions of people in the world, immigrant kids in the U.S. have it great. Just because others in American society are ignorant, racist or unaware shouldn't define your world, any more than geography did your parents'.

Photo of Jhumpa Lahiri by Marion Ettlinger from Houghton Mifflin.