Mira Nair

In Thomas C. Foster’s How to Read Literature like a Professor, Foster writes an entertaining guide of how to dig deeper into the metaphorical meaning of every piece of literature in hopes to inspire the minds of tomorrow not only to grow in their understanding of symbols but also to trust themselves and the knowledge they already have. In relation to Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake, Foster lends understanding to such common symbols like sex not being at all about the actual act but representing the challenge of one to change what is culturally expected of him. Foster also highlights that while the main character is usually safe from harm, the people around him are the ones that may get hurt in fault of the main character. Foster overall warns of the author’s possible ironic use of a common symbol, as is carried out in The Namesake with flight and eating, that twists the reader expectations thus adding depth to the story. In The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri uses sex as a pathway for Gogol to attempt to break through the cultural rules places upon him by his family. Foster offers that sex is a “symbolic action claiming for the individual freedom from convention” in which Gogol has been held to his whole life (Foster 155). As Gogol recollects on his first sexual encounter he “recalled nothing from that episode [except] only being thankful” that he had done it (Lahiri 114). This shows that Gogol is not fully interested in the sexual act, but subconsciously in the act of rebelling…

Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake follows the story of a rebellious Bengali boy named Gogol who struggles to find his own identity. While searching for a new identity, Gogol sacrifices his former self and conforms to the beliefs of those around him, causing him to become disconnected from his family and his Bengali roots. The choices that Gogol makes, such as his decisions to change his name, push away from his family, and disconnect himself from his culture, establish the themes of identity, family,…

Few films capture the essence of being an outsider in a foreign nation, namely and Indian in the United States of America, and one of these films happen to be Mira Nair’s The Namesake. Based on the titular book by Jhumpa Lahiri, the story focuses on the difficulties of a Bengali family after migrating to America, and the conflicts their son faces throughout his life after receiving an uncommon name, Gogol, at birth. Despite having such a simple premise, The Namesake shows the significance a name…

Love, Hate, and Understanding Often considered both a universal language and a source of the greatest happiness, true love can be incredibly elusive to those that do not understand it. With each relationship that a person engages in, they begin to understand their self worth and identity. The Namesake, written by Jhumpa Lahiri, accounts the life of an Indian boy from his teens to middle age and how he handles these feelings of “love”. Gogol Ganguli, firstborn of a recently immigrated family,…

The identity/post-colonial lens is an additional lens in which a reader can read through. In this lens, the reader looks for examples of how a person’s self-image is affected by how others nearby see him or her, along with also looking at how one culture naturally has power over another in the vicinity. The reader will look for characters who are affected by the world and different cultures around him or her, analyzing the effects these have on the characters. People who are only…

Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake depicts the development of a man named Nikhil Ganguli, commonly referred to as Gogol. Written in 2003, The Namesake illustrates the toils and internal journey many children of immigrants face in contemporary times. Seeing as they experience a clash between their ethnic culture and American culture, first generation children must seek a balance between the two in order to understand their identity, which is evident in Gogol’s experience. Through three phases of…

Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel The Namesake, deals with the struggle of an Indian family trying to integrate themselves in America. Indeed, the main protagonist, Gogol is an American-born Indian who is trying to “find himself ” for he is split between his Bengali heritage and and the American culture in which he lives i. He struggles to find his own identity and culture. The question of identity is dealt through names. For instance, Gogol’s name comes from the Russian author Nikolai V. Gogol. He has…

The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri, follows the life of the Ganguli family and their assimilation into America and their struggles with raising their children in a new and vastly different culture. Gogol, the main character, was born in America by two Bengali parents, Ashoke and Ashima. Throughout the novel, Gogol struggles with developing his sense of self as he dealt with a clash of Bengali culture at home and American culture in public. His parents were staunch supporters of maintaining the…

Katwe, which is in Kampala Uganda, where the movie Queen of Katwe takes place, is one of the most crime ridden places in Uganda. This is one surprising fact in an area where there is little information to go by. In the film, Queen of Katwe, director Mira Nair kept some events of Phiona Mutesi’s life the same but changed some details because she wanted to add excitement and story depth. In the film Queen of Katwe, there are many similarities and differences between the movie and the real Phiona…

Salaam Mira! Acclaimed Director, Writer and Producer, Mira Nair, grew up in Odisha (India), and studied in Shimla, Delhi and USA (Harvard). Initially she explored acting and was actively involved with theatre but then got drawn towards film-making and from 1979 started making documentaries that explored the concept of India and Indianness. She found them to be “a marriage of my interests in the visual arts, theatre, and life as it is lived”. Her second non-fiction, “So Far from India” (1982)…