Jhumpa Lahiri and South Asian literature have been deeply bonded with one another for last many years. She is one of the most glowing figures in the field of Indo-Anglican fiction. Her authorial stints movingly illustrate the dreams and destiny of South Asian immigrants in the western world, particularly in the United States. In Other Words is Jhumpa Lahiri's latest book telling her own story in an autobiographic style.
Simultaneously this book narrates the psychological, amorous and social dichotomies immigrants confront and eventually embrace while chasing the wild duck of good fortune in foreign countries. She wrote this book originally in Italian language which was later on translated into English by Ann Goldstein. In Other Words contains 256 pages and each page has the power to retain our attention profoundly.
Jhumpa Lahiri's fame as an eminent author escalated across the world after she received Pulitzer Prize for her first anthology of short stories Interpreter of Maladies in 2000. Her another marvelous feat was the Asian American Literary Award in 2009 for her book Unaccustomed Earth which contains some more moving short stories.
In addition, she achieved the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature in 2014 for her novel The Lowland published in 2013. All her books vibrate with an inescapable impulse of diaspora because of the fact that in her fictional works she highlights the delight and dismay of South Asian immigrants, particularly Indians who have been living in the United States amid disintegrated particles of hope and consternations.
While writing about Jhumpa Lahiri in the form of a literary deliberation, it is indispensable to make references to the meaning and dimensions of "diaspora". Diaspora, to define from a general point of view, stands for the migration of people from their motherland to foreign countries for economic, political or religious reasons. Diaspora jingles very close to the English word "dispersion" when the word's meaning is examined.
Dispersion means to get scattered or disintegrated. In the arena of literature, diaspora has inseparable connections with American history when we look back on the previous centuries with special glimpses of the foundation of New England during 17th and 18th centuries by scores of European immigrants who sailed all the way from England, France, Germany and other European nations and reached the shores of America in quest of peace, harmony and a theocratic statecraft.
The word "theocratic" has been cited because the trailblazers of European settlement on American landscape desired to build up a state on the basis of Biblical commandments. For this reason, essays by American authors of 17th and 18th centuries like Jonathan Edwards, Richard Cotton and John Wesley had frequent allusions to Biblical quotes and contained vivid religious directives. Most of the essays by these authors sound like admonishing and motivational sermons.
Jhumpa Lahiri has lived a massive portion of her life in the United States and her celebrated books like Interpreter of Maladies, Unaccustomed Earth, The Namesake and The Lowland resonate with echoes from Indian immigrants dwelling and making ends meet in the hectic American cities. In her personal life, Jhumpa Lahiri is married to an Italian husband and she is often found travelling to Italy.
This adds another angle to her diasporic sub-world and the dashes of Indian, American and Italian lifestyles have made her a universal citizen virtually. That's the core point of In Other Words in which Jhumpa Lahiri touches the hearts of readers by ornamenting the idea of diaspora with her passion for learning Italian language. So, lingual and amatory edges are Jhumpa Lahiri's latest creative annexations.
Jhumpa Lahiri moves the readers with her authorial prowess and insight underscoring the bizarre fates of people doomed once for all to deal with the maladaptation and perplexity caused by living and working overseas. The point of feeling isolated in a foreign country is stated by Jhumpa Lahiri in the following words, "When you live in a country where your own language is considered foreign, you can feel a continuous sense of estrangement." This line from In Other Words speaks of the lingual divide that makes people feel undermined in foreign countries.
Another few lines from In Other Words say that, "It's a sort of literary act of survival. I don't have many words to express myself--rather, the opposite. I'm aware of a state of deprivation. And yet, at the same time, I feel free, light. I rediscover the reason that I write, the joy, as well as the need." These lines expose the dualism of feeling deprived and feeling elated that works on the minds of people while living away from their native land. In a few parts of In Other Words Jhumpa Lahiri is found regretting her insufficient skills in Bengali which is her mother tongue. That's the price she pays for choosing the life of an immigrant.
Currently we are living in a world of ceaseless wars, exodus of immigrants, geopolitical hazards and economic doldrums. Millions of people are getting displaced from their roots every year due to these horrendous strokes of reality and thus their lives are being engulfed by the most unpalatable form of diaspora. As we look around the world, we cannot envision anything except armed conflicts and forced occupations of territories. Countless numbers of homeless immigrants are gathering around the borders of different countries thousands of miles away from their motherland. This is how diaspora is at present too flagrant an issue to be viewed just from the angle of literature.
In Other Words came out of press and hit book stores across the globe in February 2016 which is why this book carries the steamiest and most tantalizing reflections of Jhumpa Lahiri's approach to life. It is like the profuse personal memoirs of a minnesinger who has been travelling to antique lands for years and thus has become a well-versed anecdotist of entertaining fables from far away countries and continents. Jhumpa Lahiri Makes herself comparable to adulated litterateurs like Derek Walcott and Peter Danielson by exploring the bleak and blithe patches of people's lives away from home.
The universal appeal of In Other Words is hidden in the fact that it depicts every immigrant's untold life-sketch through the subjective reminiscence of the author. Jhumpa Lahiri has bridged up subjectivity with an intensely global spectacle in her latest book but it needs to be noted that we found this striking confluence of personal feelings and universal perspectives in her previous books too.
Mahfuz Ul Hasib Chowdhury is a columnist for The Asian Age.
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