The Immigrant Experience In Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake

Jhumpa Lahiri’s book The Namesake, whose central theme is the immigrant experience, is a beautifully written novel. One may certainly expect this from Lahiri. She is highly educated, possessing three Master’s degrees in English, Creative Writing, and Comparative Studies between Literature and the Arts ( Britannica 2017). She has a deep personal connection with the recurring themes and topics of migration, identity, and immigration that permeate her books. While being interviewed for the April 2008, issue of The Atlantic by Isaac Chotiner, she was questioned as to why her literature continuously focuses on the immigration experience. She replied by saying “It interests me to imagine characters shifting from one situation and location to another for whatever the circumstances may be”(Lahiri 2008). Like her characters, she has also struggled with issues surrounding defining herself, along with a sense of disconnect between the country she resides in along with the one her parents emigrated from. During an interview for National Public Radio, Lahiri made a statement which suggests that the art of …show more content…
They have held onto this belief, even though they have chosen to live in America and raise their family in a country that is very individualistic. When Ashima first arrives, she constantly cries for the relatives she has left behind. According to Ashoke “On more than one occasion he has come home from the university to find her morose, in bed, rereading her parents’ letters. Early mornings, when he senses that she is quietly crying, he puts an arm around her but can think of nothing to say, feeling that it is his fault, for marrying her, for bringing her here” (33). She is an outsider in a strange land. American and Indian cultures are very different. One of those differences involves the public display of affection between a man and his wife. “Whatever love exists between them is an utterly private, uncelebrated thing.”