It’s All New For Fort Greene Writer Jhumpa Lahiri: New Year, New Memoir, New Language
Acclaimed Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Jhumpa Lahiri may be starting the new year in the Fort Greene home she shares with her husband and two children, but much of her heart and mind remain in Italy, where they lived for the past three years, and where Lahiri spoke, read, and wrote only in Italian — a total immersion that not only taught her how to write for and about herself again, but also to begin reexamining her own identity.
“I feel so powerful. I feel like I can say anything I want to say. I think that’s what any artist is looking for, that freedom,” she told the Wall Street Journal in a striking and lovely candid essay.
That rediscovery of herself and forging of a new, yet overlapping, path with her previous works of fiction, has also led to the crafting and publication of a brand new work, “In Other Words” — Lahiri’s first memoir, first book in a language other than English (it’s primarily written in Italian, with English translations from a writing colleague).
The other day, I pulled down off my shelf all the little journals I published in 20 years ago, like AGNI or New Letters or StoryQuarterly. I felt like they’re sacred. With all due respect, no shelf full of The Lowland will ever give me that emotion. Because those were the things that felt like miracles. You wanted to publish that? I wasn’t paid, three people read them, I made like five photocopies and gave one to my parents and one to my friend and one to my writing teacher, and that was it! Nobody knew who I was and nobody cared and nobody commented on it, and it wasn’t reviewed.
This whole experience—going to Italy, living in Rome, learning a new language—I’m keenly aware of some fundamental desire to go back to some kind of beginning place. As I continue to write in Italian, I’m back to photocopying stuff. And I’ll give it to an Italian friend of mine here, saying, “Hey, I wrote this diary thing if you want to read it in your free time, no pressure.” Whereas I know if I had published that text, in English, inThe New Yorker, it would be a different thing, right? It would be a different experience.
Known locally as a long-time resident and author with a understatedly resonant voice, and nationally as one of America’s foremost voices on Indian American experiences — famous for her Pulitzer Prize winning debut novel “Interpreter of Maladies,” her follow-up novel-turned-movie “The Namesake,” and her first-ever-draft-turned-final-for-now-novel “The Lowlands” — Lahiri is also more than the person portrayed publicly. And her latest book — her memoir — begins to delve into that emotional core.
Click here to read more of Lahiri’s WSJ interview, discussing the value of language, the power and origins of nostalgia, and the connection between language, identity, communication, and freedom.