Email this article 
Hide
Show all
Heirs of Ambivalence: The Study of the Identity Crisis of the Second-Generation Indian Americans in Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies
Abstract
Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies is a collection of short stories which, for the most part, deals with the identity crisis of the Indian Americans who are trapped in-between their Indian heritage and the American culture. The crisis is manifest in their unremitting struggle to preserve, to integrate, and to adjust. The collection, due to its dealing with the in-between-ness, ambivalence, hybridity, and marginality of the displaced Indian Americans, is receptive to the postcolonial studies. This essay draws on the relevant ideas and concepts in the field of the diaspora identity to examine Lahiri's “A Temporary Matter,” “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine,” “Sexy,” and “This Blessed House” which portray identity crisis of the second-generation Bengali migrants. The ultimate objective is to investigate into the nature of the internal ambivalence of Lahiri's second-generation characters caused by the reciprocal influence of Host/Guest relationships. The significance of the present study is twofold; on the one hand, it accentuates the intellectual attention to the crisis of identity felt by the exponentially increasing second-generation diaspora; on the other hand, it attempts to attract concentrated scholarly interest in diaspora ambivalence which is one of Lahiri scholars’ less addressed concerns.
Keywords
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Anwer, Megha. (2017). After melancholia: A reappraisal of second-generation diasporic subjectivity in the work of Jhumpa Lahiri. Rev. Journal of Postcolonial Writing. Retrieved 21 April 2017. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17449855.2017.1283727?journalCode=rjpw20.
Ashcroft, Bill, and Pal Ahluwalia. (2001). Edward Said. London: Routledge.
Bahmanpour, Bahareh. (2010). Female Subjects and Negotiating Identities in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies. Studies in Literature and Language, 1(6), 43-51. Retrieved 21 April 2017. www.cscanada.net/index.php/sll/article/view/j.sll.1923156320100106.006.
Bandyopadhyay, Debarati. (2009). Negotiating Borders of Culture: Jhumpa Lahiri’s Fiction. Journal of Literature, Culture and Media Studies, (1), 97-98. Retrieved 21 April 2017. www.inflibnet.ac.in/ojs/index.php/JLCMS/article/viewFile/9/8.
Bhabha, Homi K. (2004). The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge.
Brada-Williams, Noelle. (2004). Reading Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies as a Short Story Cycle. MELUS. 29(3/4), 451-464. Retrieved 21 April 2017. https://academic.oup.com/melus/article-abstract/29/3-4/451/1080624/Reading-Jhumpa-Lahiri-s-Interpreter-of-Maladies-as?redirectedFrom=fulltext.
Goldberg, David Theo. (2005). Heterogeneity and Hybridity: Colonial Legacy, Postcolonial Heresy. A companion to postcolonial studies. Edited by Henry Schwarz and Sangeeta Ray. 2nd ed. Australia: Blackwell.
Heinze, Ruediger. (2007). A Diasporic Overcoat? Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 43(2), 191-202. Retrieved 2 January 2017. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17449850701430598.
Huntington, Samuel P. (1993). The Clash of Civilizations. Foreign Affairs, 72(3): 22-49. Retrieved 21 April 2017. DOI: 10.2307/20045621.
Katrak, Ketu H. (2002). The Aesthetics of Dislocation: Writing the Hybrid Lives of the South Asian Americans. The Women's Review of Books. 19(5), 5-6. Old City Publishing, Inc. Retrieved 16 April 2016. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4023785.
Lahiri, Jhumpa. (1999). Interpreter of Maladies. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
Landry, D. and G. Maclean. (1996). The Spivak Reader. New York and London: Routledge.
Leyda, Julia. (2011). An Interview with Jhumpa Lahiri. Contemporary Women’s Writing, 5(1), 66-83. Retrieved 2 January 2017. https://academic.oup.com/cww/article-abstract/5/1/66/327848/An-Interview-with-Jhumpa-Lahiri?redirectedFrom=fulltext.
Lutzoni, Silvia. (2017). Jhumpa Lahiri and the Grammar of a Multi-Layered Identity. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 38(1), 108-118. Retrieved 2 January 2017. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07256868.2016.1269062?journalCode=cjis20.
Madsen, Deborah L. (2003). Beyond the Borders, American Literature and Post-colonial Theory. London: Pluto Press.
Macwan, Hiral. (2014). Struggle for Identity and Diaspora in Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Invention, 3(12), 45-49. Retrieved 2 January 2017. www.ijhssi.org/papers/v3(12)/Version-1/G031201045049.pdf.
Noor, Ronny. (2000). Jhumpa Lahiri. Interpreter of Maladies. Rev. of Interpreter of Maladies, World Literature Today, 74(2), 365-366. Retrieved 2 January 2017. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40155634?origin=crossref&seq=1#fndtn-page_scan_tab_contents.
Schwarz, Henry, and Sangeeta Ray. (2005). A companion to postcolonial studies. Malden: Blackwell.
Sharp, Jenny. (2005). Postcolonial Studies in the House of US Multiculturalism. A companion to postcolonial studies. Edited by Henry Schwarz and Sangeeta Ray. Malden: Blackwell.
Shukla, Shilpa and Niroj Banerji. (2012). The theme of ‘alienation’ and ‘assimilation’ in the novels of Bharati Mukherjee and Jhumpa Lahiri: A socio – literary perspective. International Journal of English and Literature, 5(1), 19-22. 4 January 2017. http://academicjournals.org/journal/IJEL/article-abstract/3B50DFE42714.
Srikanth, Rajini. (2003). Unsettling Asian American Literature: When More than America is in the Heart. Beyond the Borders, American Literature and Post-Colonial Theory. Edited by Deborah L. Madsen. London: Pluto Press.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.7n.2p.113
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
2012-2023 (CC-BY) Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD.
International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature
To make sure that you can receive messages from us, please add the journal emails into your e-mail 'safe list'. If you do not receive e-mail in your 'inbox', check your 'bulk mail' or 'junk mail' folders.