At a Monday evening event at the Cogut Institute for the Humanities, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri spoke about writing across various languages, her relationship with perfectionism and her upbringing in Rhode Island.
The 90-minute talk was organized as part of the Cogut Institute’s Flynn Speaker Series and moderated by Associate Professor of Literary Arts Karan Mahajan.
Over her decades-long career, Lahiri has penned numerous novels, story collections and essays in both Italian and English. Her debut story collection, “The Interpreter of Maladies,” won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000, and her first novel, “The Namesake,” was adapted into a major motion picture. She is currently the director of creative writing at Barnard College.
After Lahiri’s work in English gained critical acclaim, she began publishing work in Italian. In a 2015 New Yorker piece, Lahiri explained that she learned the language over the course of a decade largely because she had an “infatuation” with it.
At the talk, Lahiri said she couldn’t rationally explain why she gravitated toward the language. She compared the choice to write in Italian over other languages to why one might “fall in love with one person and not another person.”
Lahiri didn’t intend to start publishing works in Italian, she said. “It was like I had played the piano for a long time, and then suddenly I picked up a violin, and this could also make music in a different way,” she said.
For her, learning the language allowed her to “create a triangle out of the warring dyad of English and Bengali, which were the two languages that raised” her.
Working in Italian also allowed Lahiri to overcome her perfectionist instincts while writing, since she had to “tolerate not being able to express (herself) perfectly well,” she said.
She also “felt imperfect as a person,” and moving to Italy in 2012 allowed her to confront that, she said.
Lahiri described the ideal of belonging in America as more of a “myth” than a reality.
She grew up in Kingston, Rhode Island, but she only published her first novel set in the state — “The Lowland” — in 2013 after years of avoiding the setting.
“I was raised by a mother who suffered from terrible nostalgia and homesickness for her city, Kolkata, and that made me who I was,” Lahiri said.
“To write about Rhode Island,” she explained, “was to dredge that emotional stuff up and in a very unfiltered way.” Instead, she would end up “masquerading” her experiences by setting stories in Massachusetts.
After experiencing alienation throughout her upbringing, Lahiri felt as though she “couldn’t be American,” she said. But living in Italy and writing in Italian allowed Lahiri to embrace “a state of foreignness, instead of pretending that (she) belonged.”
During the talk, Lahiri also reflected on the thematic recurrence of transit in her writing, pointing to her 2018 novel “Dove mi trovo.” The novel was originally published in Italian, and Lahiri ultimately settled on its English title while she was sitting on a flight to Rome. Instead of using the literal translation of “Dove mi trovo” — “Where I find myself” — she chose “Whereabouts.”
“We may think we’re more acutely in transit when we’re sitting in (Boston Logan International Airport) or whatever, but it’s just an illusion,” Lahiri said. “We’re always in transit between one thing and another.”
For her, translation represents transit: As works are translated from one language to the next, “there’s no definitive text anymore,” she said. “Even if the translation is finished, we know that another translation can come tomorrow.”
Lahiri also said she prefers writing short stories, which she called “the freest form.”
Short stories are “free from the whole economics of publishing,” she said, adding that story collections are seen as a “dreaded form” in the publishing world.
“Mention it to any agent or publisher and watch them run,” she joked.
Cogut Institute organizers received an “overwhelming response” to the event, they wrote in an email to waitlisted participants. During the panel, Karan Mahajan joked that, given how popular the event was, he “could have sold tickets on the black market.”
Akir Sridharan ’28 registered for the event after recognizing Lahiri’s name from books his father owns at home. After securing his spot, Sridharan read two of Lahiri’s books on a single trip to Boston.
“I was kind of worried that I’d come (to the event) and be totally out of my depth, ” said Sridharan, who intends to study applied math and physics. But ultimately, he felt more comfortable than he expected.
“I didn’t know they had events like this at Brown that anyone could go to,” he added. “I’m really happy I got the opportunity” to attend.
Biagio Mazzella GS, a graduate student in Italian studies who attended the event, said that Lahiri’s discussion of cultural translation between Italian and American literary landscapes was thought-provoking. The talk, he said, made him question what it means to “convert or communicate Italian culture here, in the Anglophone world.”
Giovanna Conti GS, also a graduate student in Italian studies, said that Lahiri’s place in the Italian literary world was interesting to her — particularly because “she’s not considered an Italian author, but an Italian language author.”
For her, this provoked questions about what the label of “Italian author” even means.
Annika Singh is The Herald’s tech chief and a metro editor from Singapore. She covers crime, justice and local politics, but mainly she stands in line for coffee and looks up answers every time she attempts a crossword.
