Contemporary World Great Authors: Jhumpa Lahiri

Roza Puspita/186332026

In discussing about the contemporary World great author, India is one of the
countries that have some great authors. In this case I would like to take one of the
examples of the World great author from India to be discussed. Jhumpa Lahiri, the
most successful of the Indian women writers who created the difference among all
the Indian women writers. She is a wonderful storyteller and novelist with a unique
voice. She is different from other Indian writers writing in English. She was born in
London and her connection with India is by her parents and grandparents while most
of the other writers are born and experience living in India. India would appear to her
sometimes full of wonders, sometimes full of beggars. However, Lahari is honest and
authentic to her experiences.

Lahiri has received global recognition for her literary genius. Her debut
collection of stories, Interpreter of Maladies (1999), won the Pulitzer Prize and The
New Yorker Debut of the Year award. Her novel, The Namesake (2003), was a Los
Angeles Times Book Prize finalist in addition to being selected as one of the best
books of the year by USA Today. Her second collection of stories, Unaccustomed
Earth, was No. 1 on The New York Times Review's list of 100 Books of 2008. Her
most recently published work, The Lowland, was shortlisted for the Man Booker
Prize 2013 and also won DSC PRIZE for South Asian Literature in Jaipur Litfest
2015.

Jhumpa Lahiri has skill to change cultural perspective through her works
because her works are written about between cultures. Those are mainly about
immigrants, cultural clashes, assimilation and adaptation and so on. They disclose
how the socio-cultural forces, ethnicity, and genders have influenced the expatriate
characters and bring out anxieties, uneasiness, nostalgia, rootlessness and
alienation, disconnection in relationship and identity crisis that they have to come to
terms with.

The Namesake, her first novel is the example of depiction identity crisis of the
first and second generation expatriates. This crisis is dealt with immigrant's families
and their internal and socio-cultural relations with the people of the foreign country.
Much of the part of the novel centers on the Gogol’s name that is the most basic part
of an individual’s identity. This name itself becomes the main cause of identity crisis
faced by Gogol. This identity crisis also affects Gogol’s family relationship and his
social relation with his peers. In fact, Gogol Ganguli's conflict for discovering his
identity is dual. The name that ultimately defines a person's individuality becomes a
problem for him. It does not give him an identity but puts him in a dilemma, about his
original identity. Secondly, as a child of immigrants in America, he constantly has to
resist with conflicts arising due to his Indian roots. Gogol has had to negotiate two
very different cultures throughout his life, as well as a third brought about by his
name.

Jhumpa Lahiri's contribution as a diaspora writer has been exclusive in the

sense that while portraying the dynamics of culture and diaspora in the context of
characters from Bengali Community, she has successfully given them a universal
appeal – making them represent the dilemma of everyman in every age irrespective
of culture and ethnicity.

Reference:

Margaret, R.A. (2016). The Indian Women Writers and their Contribution in the World
Literature- A Critical Study. International Journal on Studies in English
Language and Literature (IJSELL), 4, PP 32-36