Lahiri examines her characters’ struggles, anxieties, and biases to explain the details of immigrant psych and behaviour. Jhumpa Lahiri through her work states that the distinction between human cultures is man-made. The characteristic of her writing is “plain” language and her characters. Often Indian immigrants to America must find a way between the cultural values of their homeland and their adopted home. Jhumpa Lahiri has the abilitie to pass on the most seasoned social clashes in the most prompt mold and to accomplish the voices of a wide range of characters are among the one of a kind qualities that have caught the consideration of a wide crowd. She was conceived in London, and after that moved to Rhode Island as a youthful kid with her Bengali guardians. It is especially engaging that Jhumpa Lahiri is the child of Indian immigrants and that she also crosses from England, her birth place, to the U.S.A. and became an American citizen. In The Namesake, Lahiri’s experiences of growing up as a child of immigrants resemble that of her protagonist, Gogol Ganguly. Immigration became blessing in disguise as that makes her a Diaspora writer. In her novel, The Namesake, Lahiri deals with the frightful experience of Ashoke and Ashima, the Indian immigrants and their offsprings, Gogol and Sonia, the second generation, conceived and raised in America. This novel manages space, time, dialect, and societies for drawing out the substance of Indian diaspora. Lahiri has specified three landmasses - Asia, Europe and North America in her novel. She plans to build up the topic of the novel, diasporic dilemma, through the fundamental characters-Ashoke, Ashima, and Gogol. For Ashoke, diasporic strain isn't profound. It is exceptionally obvious in Ashima and Gogol. Sonia is
Some people struggle with understanding who they are every day. They constantly look for ways to fit in. Curiosity can make him or her search for their place in society. In the narrative “You don’t look Indian” by Greg Sarris, we follow him in his journey to finding out his true identity.
J. Eng. Lit. Cult. becomes merely “Street” as (does) Lingayat Street, Mudliyar Street and half a dozen others in Toturpuram” (5) in a gesture of egalitarianism whose effects are literally, as well as symbolically, disorientating. The sense of displacement is compounded by changes that have occurred on the street itself over the last few decades- “instead of the tender smell of fresh jasmine.... in scented sticks and virtue, instead of the chanting of sacred hymns the street had become thud with the haggling of cloth merchants and vegetable vendors, (and) the strident strains of the latest film music from video parlours” (5-6). The incursion of these loud and nestling registers of cultural change into the sanctuary of Sripathi‟s study mirrors more significant assaults on his sense of traditions including most worryingly, the refusal of his children to lead the lives he has imagined for him: his daughter Maya has broken off her engagement to an Indian man to marry a Canadian with whom she now lives in Vancouver, and his son Arun has rejected a tradition job in favour of a career as an environmental activist. Sripathi responds to the affronts by ceasing to communicate, literally, in the case of Maya, with whom he has stopped corresponding, and figuratively, with Arun and the rest of his family, through a retreat into an increasingly self enclosed world. The narrative traces the gradual expansion of his consciousness, a process initiated by Maya‟s death in a car
...ds them, in accents they are accustomed not to trust” (Lahiri 108). This too is a form of double-consciousness as both Ashoke and Ashima are aware of the loss of culture, of their own identity in their children as their children shun India and by extension Bengali culture, and no longer sound like the people they miss and love back in Calcutta. It is extremely sad, because in order to make a better life for themselves and for their family they came to America, but because of the search for opportunity, they also lost their sense of identity in their children even though they tried their hardest to create a kind of Bengali community in America as well. Quietly, unlike Dre, Ashoke, more than Ashima comes to understand that he cannot push his culture upon his children, especially Gogol, and instead allows Gogol to navigate being Bengali and being American, for himself.
The Das family is Indian, but they have been socialized into American culture. These observations of the family’s American-like behaviors are seen through the eyes of the Indian tour-guide, Mr. Kapasi. During a rest stop, Lahiri mentions, “Where’s Mina?” Mr. Das asked. Mr. Kapasi found it strange that Mr. Das should refer to his wife by her first name when speaking to the little girl” (337). Mr. Das was inquiring of the whereabouts of his wife, and did so by using her first name. The lack of Mr. Das’ term of respect for his wife, especially in front of his child, is shocking to Mr. Kapasi. Mr. Kapasi probably has been socialized to use respectful terms to refer to one’s wife, and this norm is emphasized when in the company of a young child who must likewise, understand the importance of respect. However, Mr. and Mrs. Das were raised in American, an individualistic society, and it is seen as normal, in American standards, for an individual to be called by her first name. It does not matter who the audience is as long as she is regarded as an individual. Of course, this is all very strange to Mr. Kapasi, who has not experienced American culture first-handed. However, Mr. Kapasi has been able to peak into American life through the watching of television programs. Lahiri writes, “Thei...
The sketches of their past always remain with them. Jhumpa Lahiri spectacularly carves out the acculturation, alienation and nostalgia of Indian immigrants in her novel “The Namesake”. Jhumpa Lahiri herself belongs to the second generation of Indian immigrants. The characters live in two worlds simultaneously, one is the American culture and the other is their native culture , and the first generation always longs for their home which is left behind and becomes nostalgic. They remain torn between the past and present. It really troubles the marginalized gentry of the Diasporas to live in an alien land. The bewildered and vague memories of the homelands seem to stimulate a skimpy desire for “home,” to go back to “the lost world”.
Jhumpa Lahiri, the brilliant author of The Namesake, made a significant point about second-generation immigrants having dual-identities in America. In terms of dual-identity in The Namesake, a person is encountered with choosing between cultures, lifestyles, and decisions. Gogol Ganguli, a protagonist, faces the problem of dual-identity throughout the book. Furthermore, he was faced with the idea of becoming either a true American or Bengali. Gogol’s problematic dual-identity journey started from the day that he was born till the day he found a true balance between his dual-identity.
Elizabeth Nunn-Faron
Dr. Craig Palmer
5 May 2014
Cultural Anthropology
The Forgotten Frontier, Ranchers of North Brazil
Peter Rivière, the author of “The Forgotten Frontier, Ranchers of North Brazil”, is a British social anthropologist that is known in England, as a pioneer of the study and teaching of Amazonian people. He traveled to the northernmost parts of Brazil, specifically to the state of Roraima, from June 1967 until December 1967 to study the socioeconomic organization of cattle ranchers of Brazil. His attitude towards the ranchers was that of strong cultural relativity, as he states, “the object of this study is to demonstrate the relationship between a set of historical, geographical, and environmental factors and a particular form of socioeconomic organization, but at the same time I hope to give the reader a good idea of what the ranching life on the savannas of Roraima is like.” (Rivière 2)
The author of the story was born in 1967 in London, and soon after she moved to Rhode Island in the United States. Although Lahiri was born in England and raised in the United States and her parent’s still carried an Indian cultural background and held their believes, as her father and mother were a librarian and teacher. Author’s Indian heritage is a strong basis of her stories, stories where she questions the identity and the plot of the different cultural displaced. Lahiri always interactive with her parents in Bengali every time which shows she respected her parents and culture. As the author was growing up she never felt that she was a full American, as her parents deep ties with India as they often visited the country. Most of Lahiri’s work focused on the Indian American culture and the story “Interpreter in Maladies” is a set of India and part of United States.
word, ‘Kadampa’, ‘Ka’ refers to Buddha’s teachings, and ‘dam’ to Atisha’s special the stages of