1. “Americaness” Refracted through the Lens of Recent Indian Immigrants in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Interpreter of Maladies Where am I, and Who am I?

2. Indian-American Author, Jhumpa Lahiri

3. The Education of a Writer After graduating from Barnard college, Lahiri continued at Boston University to obtain her masters degrees in English, comparative literature, and creative writing and later her PhD in Renaissance studies.

4. Just like for Mrs. Sen, “home” for Lahiri’s parents, always meant India. Born on July 11 th, 1967, in London, the daughter of Indian immigrants, Jhumpa Lahiri moved to Rhode Island when she was three. Rhode Island, located on the east coast of the U.S. represented Lahiri’s parents’ “third continent.”

5. “I went to Calcutta neither as a tourist nor as a former resident - a valuable position, I think, for a writer...Though I've never lived anywhere but America, India continues to form part of my fictional landscape. The terrain is very much the terrain of my own life - New England and New York, with Calcutta always hovering in the background.”

6. Bengali Identity: 4,000 years of continuous culture…language, food The ancient kingdom of Bengal is comprised of the Indian state of West Bengal, which includes the famous city of Calcutta (or Kolkata), and the country of Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan).

7. A Pulitzer Prize winning 1 st Publication ! “Now that the writing is done, I've realized that America is a real presence in the book [The Interpreter of Maladies]; the characters must struggle and come to terms with what it means to live here, to be brought up here, to belong and not belong… [Houghton Mifflin Company Interview]”

8. Mrs. Sen’s What is the significance of Lahiri’s title? Why stress the place versus the person? Why use the possessive? What belongs to Mrs. Sen?

9. The Location of Culture? Drawing upon the title of Homi Bhabha’s famous book of postcolonial criticism, we can bring this postcolonial question to Lahiri’s “Mrs. Sen’s” by asking WHAT counts as culture in the story? What daily acts add up to the snobby term “culture”? Or more poignantly, living in diaspora – a state of displacement, or dislocation-- what objects and acts make a house a home?

10. Close-Reading: 1. Unpacking Lahiri’s descriptive passages. 2. Analyzing the subtext in Lahiri’s dialogue. 3. From Image to Theme: Analyzing Lahiri’s use of repetition. 4. Analyzing Lahiri’s use of point of view: In what way is this Eliot’s story?

11. Lahiri’s telling diction How is Mrs. Sen’s current state of mind made “legible” by the look of the apartment? (see page 112) How are her cultural values and expectations also “written” there? What’s poignant about the fact that a “bit of color” from her lipstick “had strayed beyond the borders”?

12. Let Eliot’s “home-schooling” begin! By putting Eliot and Mrs. Sen together in the same space, Lahiri’s short story sets in motion a series of natural comparisons between American culture and Indian culture, which beg the question: What is normal? Q: Why is it that in comparison to Mrs. Sen, it’s Eliot’s mother “who looked odd”? Consider how competing versions of femininity and domesticity impact the question: What is a home?

13. Exhibit A: “Everything is there.” Let’s analyze the first example of dialogue we come to in the story. (see page 113) Q: What “things” make up Mrs. Sen’s everything?

14. “Two things, Eliot learned, made Mrs. Sen happy” (121). Letters from FamilyFresh Fish What effect do the blue areogram letters have on Mrs. Sen? What kinds of news does she learn from the letters? Why does Mrs. Sen also prize the cassette tape her family made for her, the day she left India? (128) Why is procuring fresh fish so important to Mrs. Sen? When Mr. Sen can’t drive them to the fish shop, she weeps. “Tell me, Eliot. Is it too much to ask?” (125)

15. Cultural Comparison: one conversation at a time! Group One:Group Two: Re-read pages 115-117. “so much silence…too much noise” What contrasts between Indian and American culture are implicit in these conversations? Re-read pages 119-121. “you could go places…” Why is driving such a significant part of American life -- a rite of passage Mrs. Sen rejects?

16. Group Three: Linked Conversations The concept of “missing”The concept of filial piety Re-read 122-123. “Do you miss your mother?... you already taste the way things must be” (123). What does the conversation reveal about the value of dependence versus independence? Re-read the conversation that begins at the bottom of page 131: “Eliot…will you put your mother in a nursing home…?” How do the two conversations fit together?

17. +/- Indian POVAmerican POV Independence Dependence Individual freedom Communal obligations Freedom and Mobility Duty and Repetition Privacy Proximity: neighbors, friends, family Independence Dependence Individual freedom Communal obligations Freedom and Mobility Duty and Repetition Privacy Proximity: neighbors, friends, family

18. Re-read the ending of the story. (135) Is he “fine”? Why is this Eliot’s story to tell?

19. Why Three Continents? Lahiri’s final story in the collection urges us to think about hybrid-identities in a postcolonial world. A hybrid is something MIXED. In what ways is our narrator part Bengali, part British, and part American?

20. An (Un)likely Couple? Mrs. Croft, age 103Our narrator, age 36 In what ways do these two characters share what we might call a “Victorian” past? What quintessential American values do these two share?

21. “Splendid!” The American Flag on the Moon ? Is the image of the American flag on the moon to be a positive image – an heroic image, even – or a negative image, that speaks to American exceptionalism, or what some might call “neo- imperialism” ?

22. DISTANCE: both literal and figurative* The issue of geographical distance is juxtaposed in Lahiri’s short story with the narrator’s experience of psychological distance – the internal distances between people. With this in mind, explain what happens in Mrs. Croft’s parlor to lessen the distance between the narrator and his new wife, Mala (195-196). * See also Lahiri’s story “Sexy” which explores this issue.

23. What makes a place “home”? On page 196, the narrator seems to offer us a sped-up version of his and Mala’s assimilation process. What can we learn from this description? In particular, why is the narrator so affected by the news of Mrs. Croft’s death? “…the first death I mourned in America” (196)

24. Not “beyond” Lahiri’s imagination Re-read the final paragraph of “TFC,” and ask yourself why Lahiri decides to end her collection with this particular story. Thinking about the collection as a whole, why do you think Lahiri needed to include BOTH “Mrs. Sen’s” and “Third and Final Continent” to make her fictional treatment of immigrant experiences in America complete? How do the two stories work together? Share your thoughts!

25. BIBLIOGRAPHY “ Jhumpa Lahiri on her Debut Novel.” Houghton Mifflin Company Release. http://hinduism.about.com/library/weekly/extra/bl- jhumpainterview.htm http://hinduism.about.com/library/weekly/extra/bl- jhumpainterview.htm Wcislo, Katherine, “Jhumpa Lahiri.” Postcolonial Studies at Emory. http://english.emory.edu/Bahri/Lahiri.htmlhttp://english.emory.edu/Bahri/Lahiri.html

26. Announcing: the People’s Choice Awards! Your homework for next Tuesday’s class is to read all 14 of the Chinese short-shorts, but then decide which are your 2 or 3 favorites. Also, complete the writing prompt.