Review
“Ever since I was a child, I’ve belonged only to my words. I don’t have a country, a specific culture. If I didn’t write, if I didn’t work with words, I wouldn’t feel that I’m present on earth.
It is one thing to write a book, another to learn a language, and entirely different talent to combine both.
There is nothing for me but amazement towards Jhumpa Lahiri‘s prowess and motivation to learn Italian. Towards the story, I felt for her—I saw myself in her, albeit not as powerful, as she grapples for dear life as she dove into this undiscovered island.
I find it rather difficult to identify who she is and who her translator is within the pages as I have no idea how she actually writes, and she wrote this originally in Italian so…yeah! What I do know, is that the words really does transcribe well within the depth of my language fascinated heart.
“Imperfection inspires invention, imagination, creativity. It stimulates. The more I feel imperfect, the more I feel alive.”
Jhumpa Lahiri‘s words definitely flowed as gently as water in the pages of her book. Although at some parts it felt kinda stiff and relatively far off. I cannot explain why I felt that feeling. Perhaps it is something in the midst of translation but some parts, to me, felt rather odd.
In Other Words is a brilliant take in diving into an unknown territory. It is an experiment with which the author shared to us her experience with not only language learning but also the beautiful connection of culture in language itself. A breeze of a read, this book is something I’d recommend people who are also learning a new language, or somebody who’s curious about the journey.
“Those who don’t belong to any specific place can’t, in fact, return anywhere. The concepts of exile and return imply a point of origin, a homeland. Without a homeland and without a true mother tongue, I wander the world, even at my desk. In the end I realize that it wasn’t a true exile: far from it. I am exiled even from the definition of exile.”
About the Author
Nilanjana Sudeshna “Jhumpa” Lahiri was born in London and brought up in South Kingstown, Rhode Island. Brought up in America by a mother who wanted to raise her children to be Indian, she learned about her Bengali heritage from an early age.
Lahiri graduated from South Kingstown High School and later received her B.A. in English literature from Barnard College in 1989. She then received multiple degrees from Boston University: an M.A. in English, an M.A. in Creative Writing, an M.A. in Comparative Literature and a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies. She took up a fellowship at Provincetown’s Fine Arts Work Center, which lasted for the next two years (1997-1998).
In 2001, she married Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush, a journalist who was then Deputy Editor of TIME Latin America Lahiri currently lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children. She has been a Vice President of the PEN American Center since 2005.
Lahiri taught creative writing at Boston University and the Rhode Island School of Design. Much of her short fiction concerns the lives of Indian-Americans, particularly Bengalis.
She received the following awards, among others:
1999 – PEN/Hemingway Award (Best Fiction Debut of the Year) for Interpreter of Maladies;
2000 – The New Yorker’s Best Debut of the Year for Interpreter of Maladies;
2000 – Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her debut Interpreter of Maladies
