Interpreter Of Maladies Research Articles

Gender Representation in Contemporary Indian Women Writers

This research paper delves into the nuanced exploration of gender representation in the literary works of two distinguished contemporary Indian women writers, Arundhati Roy and Jhumpa Lahiri. The investigation encompasses a historical analysis of their narratives, scrutinizing their impact on societal perceptions and the evolving discourse surrounding gender roles. Arundhati Roy's seminal work, "The God of Small Things," serves as a focal point for examining her adept dismantling of traditional gender norms within the socio-cultural fabric of India. Concurrently, Jhumpa Lahiri's Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of short stories, "Interpreter of Maladies," provides a diasporic lens through which gender intersects with cultural identities. The paper progresses through individual analyses of Roy and Lahiri's works, unraveling their unique approaches to gender representation. While Roy challenges societal expectations in India through vivid portrayals of characters breaking free from established norms, Lahiri navigates the diasporic experience, intricately weaving the intersectionality of gender with cultural identity. Common themes and divergent approaches between the two authors are explored, contributing to a broader dialogue on gender representation in contemporary Indian literature. As the narrative unfolds, critical reception and scholarly debates surrounding Roy and Lahiri's works are considered, shedding light on the dynamic nature of gender representation within diverse cultural landscapes. The research also anticipates future trends, emphasizing emerging themes such as intersectionality, global feminist perspectives, and the integration of technology in shaping narratives. Ethical considerations and the advocacy for inclusive publishing practices are discussed, recognizing the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. This research aims to amplify the voices of women in literature, providing a comprehensive understanding of their experiences while paving the way for a more inclusive and equitable literary landscape.

Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies as Postmodern Rupture on Classical Diaspora

This research paper illumines how Jhumpa Lahiri’s short stories’ collection Interreter of Maladies presents postmodern diaspora as the discontinuity of classical diaspora. Classical/traditional diaspora sees homeland as irreplaceable place. The immigrants eventually return their homelands. Lahiri's version of diaspora differs from traditional mode of diaspora. As a well-known Indian American writer, Jhumpa Lahiri is pretty admired for her chronicle of Bengali immigrant experience. Though she portrays an attachment of immigrants with their homeland, they do not necessarily dream of returning home one day. They continuously strive to adjust themselves in new milieu. Lahiri’s characters in Interpreter of Maladies go on endeavoring to transform their sense of dislocation as their proper location. They constantly build up new identity using their memory combining with new ongoing experiences in new setting.

(Re)constructing the Notion of Identity in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies: A Diasporic Study of Selected Stories

The current study poses its focus on the complexities of diasporic tensions, especially concentrating on the reductive methods, contributing towards the homogenization of the formed and consolidated cultural and national identities. The concept of nationalism has often been utilized by third-world countries to express their views of cultural hegemony. However, the current research aims to provide an alternate perspective concerning globalization and cosmopolitanism. Furthermore, this study presents a diasporic picture of Lahiri’s characters celebrating multiculturalism and transnationalism. This study draws its foundation from Postcolonialism as a theoretical framework along with other concepts of leading theorists to conduct a close textual analysis of the selected works. Moreover, this study aims to analyze the representations of cultural and national identities in the characters of the selected text whom Lahiri puts in the in-between space of nation and identity, where they represent multiple cultures and histories. By so doing, Lahiri rejects the appeal to original accounts, which unfold cultural identities, while attempting to break and reconstruct the foremost chronicle of the nation. In the selected text, the Interpreter of Maladies (1999) nation and home are re-imagined not as a monolithic or stagnant space but rather as a precisely created structure, transformed and confronted, and resultantly shaping identities in a struggle. Consequently, the re-constructed diasporic approach unveils a deep crack in the consolidated unity and arises, instead, with multiple identities, which in Lahiri’s terms must be accepted, while coming out of the rhetoric of nationalism.

Balancing Dualities and Fusing Opposites: Reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreters of Maladies

With a focus on Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies, this research investigates the intricate existence of Indian women caught up in the conventional marginalization at the hands of patriarchy in their home country and repressions of otherness across new borders. By employing Gloria Anzaldua’s concept of “balancing dualities and fusing opposites”, I analyze Lahiri’s text in order to explore how, oscillating between displacement and resettlement, gendered identities are formed in the in-between space of acceptance across borders. Border crossing is mostly embedded in the experiences of displacement, alienation, and longing for belonging. Diasporic experiences are heterogeneous in articulating the loss and pains of dislocation, uprootedness, and struggles of immigrants to territorialize across new borders. This study explores the diverse experiences of diasporic women in the confrontation of the opposite borders of old and new and scrutinizes how they make their lives meaningful in their respective situations. In this paper, I argue that life across borders offers an in-between space for doubly marginalized women by resisting the hierarchical patterns at home and abroad and balancing these dualities in the liminal space between two cultures. Moreover, this cross- border life also strives towards fusing cultural opposites in the space of un/belonging through strategic resistance and resilience.

Ethnicity and multiculturalism in Namesake and Interpreter of Maladies

Ethnicity and multiculturalism in Namesake and Interpreter of Maladies

From Escape to Acceptance: A Tale of ‘Mrs. Sen’s’ Cultural Assimilation

"Interpreter of Maladies" by Jhumpa Lahiri is a charming collection of superbly crafted short stories. First book by author concentrates on postcolonial diasporic challenges affecting Indians and Indian-Americans who are trapped between the forcibly abandoned Indian roots and the completely new western society they must accept in order to live. They thus have erratic lives. It is necessary for the diaspora to maintain the balance between these two very different cultures. Because of the portrayal of female subalterns in the new social milieu and the postcolonial cultural identity question, the book is intriguing to read. Notable is how the female protagonists struggle to adopt the new cultural identity and get approval for it from both the culturally superior validator and the male validator.The female characters work hard to convey their subaltern viewpoint, despite their struggles with the painful anxiety of either success or failure as they create their new identities in the new situation. The women characters in Lahiri's works typically take the biggest hits when there is a diasporic shift in setting. Mrs. Sen, the titular character is one such example. Jhumpa Lahiri has adroitlyillustrated how difficult it is for women like Mrs. Sen to establish their presence and identities both in a foreign country and in their own homes, positioned against their husbands. The women characters in these diasporic settings suffer because their roots have been abandoned in favour of a new, captivating world, not by choice, which makes them even more sentimental about their beloved past and their own country. Mrs. Sen resisted the cultural assimilation and tried to safeguard her Indian identity only soon to realise that the static cultural stance will impede the survival in the new surroundings, with minimal support from her spouse. Although she heroically confronts the difficulties of her new life, she is painfully hollow within as she attempts to explain and defend her pointless lifestyle.Her realization helps her forge her new cultural identity, that is the state of ‘hybridity’or ‘multiculturism’.

Jhumpa Lahiri’s Major themes in Interpreter of Maladies

Jhumpa Lahiri’s Major themes in Interpreter of Maladies

Ethnicity and multiculturalism in Namesake and Interpreter of Maladies

India is a land of multiculturalism and Ethnicity. Multiculturalism is the key feature of postcolonial literature. Indian writers of diaspora have immensely contributed to the growth of fiction in English. Postcolonial writers like Bharati Mukherjee’s, SashiTharoor, and Rohinton Mistry, JhumpaLahiri and Harikunjru have all made their names while residing abroad. They searched the root of ethnicity and multiculturalism through their works to show uniformity. The aim of present paper is to find out the unity in diversity in immigrant people on the basis of ethnicity and multiculturalism in the novels of JhumpaLahiri.

Rift in Marriages: A study of Family Dynamics in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies

Jhumpa Lahiri is a writer of South Asian origin who was born and brought up in the United States. She debuted with her short story collection Interpreter of Maladies. The stories in this collection glance at the Indo-American diaspora. All the nine stories in this collection are aligned with the recurring patterns. The institution of marriage, romantic relationship and Indian family system vs American family pattern has been focused at length. The subtitle of the novel goes perfectly with the themes of the stories. Geetha Ganapathy- Dore’ notes that “Indian people, films, novels, beauty-queens, food and spirituality cross borders easily.” She adds that Lahiri’s collection was originally sub-titled ‘Bengal, Boston and Beyond’ (58) The three stories chosen for study reflect a modern world that witnesses the assimilation of different cultures and problem of immigrants while living in an ethnic group. “Temporary Matter”, “Sexy” and “Interpreter of Maladies” have been chosen to make the study specific. All of these emphasize on the life and circumstances leading to the rift in marriage and relationships deficit of love. This work also reflects the diaspora experiences of the Indian immigrants belonging to the first and second generation. The lucidity of language and expression are quite commendable.

Maladies Interculturally Unperceived: A Psychological Analysis of “Interpreter of Maladies” by Jhumpa Lahiri

Maladies Interculturally Unperceived: A Psychological Analysis of “Interpreter of Maladies” by Jhumpa Lahiri

Maladies Interculturally Unperceived: A Psychological Analysis of “Interpreter of Maladies” by Jhumpa Lahiri

Maladies Interculturally Unperceived: A Psychological Analysis of “Interpreter of Maladies” by Jhumpa Lahiri

Reading the Short Story “Interpreter of Maladies” through the Lens of the Discourse on Healthcare Interpreters in Turkey: Interpreter or Trouble Shooter?

Bu çalışmanın amacı, Türkiye’de sağlık çevirmenliğine ilişkin olarak yürütülen akademik çalışmalarda inşa edilen çevirmen imgesinin ışığında, Jhumpa Lahiri’nin (1999) “Interpreter of Maladies” adlı öyküsünde kurgulanan çevirmen imgesine bakmaktır. 2000 yılında “Dert Yorumcusu” başlığıyla Türkçeye çevrilen öyküde, çevirmenliğin görev tanımı ve kapsamı kurgusal düzeyde sorgulanmakta ve çevirmenden beklenen sorunları çözmek, uzlaşma sağlamak ve/veya taraf olmak gibi birtakım rollerin arabuluculuk kapsamında ele alınması gerektiğine işaret edilmektedir. Çalışma, Türkiye’de sağlık alanında çalışan çevirmenlere ilişkin olarak akademik söylemler yoluyla oluşturulan çevirmen imgesi ile Lahiri’nin öyküsünde inşa edilen çevirmen imgesini karşılaştırmaktadır. İltica ve göçler nedeniyle günlük hayatın olağan bir parçası haline gelen çevirmenlerin sinema ve yazın eserlerinde görünürlük kazanması, çeviribilimcilerin bu alanlarda inşa edilen çevirmen imgesini araştırmasına neden olmuştur çünkü sinema ve yazın eserleri toplumda yaratılan çevirmen imgelerinden beslenmektedir. Kurgusal olarak inşa edilen çevirmen imgeleri; çeviri müdahaleleri, çevirmenin yazılı veya sözlü metne sadakati, çevirmen ve yazar arasındaki güç çatışması, cinsiyet rollerinin çevirmen üzerindeki etkisi gibi konuları tartışmaya açarak çeviribilim alanında bu konularla ilgili olarak ortaya çıkan yaklaşımlara alternatif bir bakış açısı getirmektedir. Çalışma, öyküde kurgulanan müdahil çevirmen imgesinin, Türkiye’de sağlık çevirmenliğinin kültürlerarası arabuluculuk faaliyetlerini de kapsaması nedeniyle hasta yararı gözetilerek tarafsız davranılamadığına ilişkin söylemler doğrultusunda ortaya çıkan çevirmen imgesiyle örtüştüğünü ifade etmektedir. Ayrıca, çoğu zaman tarafsızlık ve tarafgirlik arasında bir tercih yapan sağlık çevirmenine ilişkin olarak oluşturulan imgenin, öyküde kurgulanan arada kalmış çevirmen stereotipiyle de örtüştüğü sonucuna varılmıştır.

Altruism in Jhumpa Lahiri’s “The Real Durwan”

Altruism is an important aspect in Positive psychology, defined as helping others and showing concern for the well- being of others without expecting any reward, the person extend help voluntarily, slowly becoming his/ her habit. Person with altruism feels empathetic at others, spend time with them, listen to them and try to be emotionally connected with them. Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies is her first book, it interprets the problems faced by the experience of diasporans such as displacement, rootlessness, disintegration, discrimination, marginalization and crisis in identity. A Real Durwan is the story about Boori Ma, a sweeper migrated to India from Pakistan because of political reasons.

Familial Bond in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Temporary Matter

Family is a bond of life chain which possesses love and concern to one another. It is with this bond the sufferings of lots of twists and turns get revealed. Jhumpa Lahiri is an Indian diasporic writer. In her work, she speaks about the dynamics of relationship, loneliness, loss and grief, connection, honesty. A Temporary Matter is taken from her interpreter of maladies. In this short story she speaks about the connection, honesty, loss, grief, and moving on. The central characters are Shoba and Shukumar. The other major characters in this story are Shoba’s Mother, Mr. Bradford and Mrs. Bradford. Shukumar and Shobaarea lovely couple. The protagonist is Shoba as she sustains a strong character. As life reverses they donot talk with each other after their child death. They receive a notice from their electric company that their power will be disconnected for the next five days from 8:00 to 9:00 P.M in order to repair the destruction caused due to snowstorm. During the period of power disconnect, Shoba and Shukumar sits together in a candle light and they share their secrets which remains disclosed for years. On the fifth day Shoba intimates her plans of moving to another house while Shukumar conveys the truth that he stood in the labour ward during her delivery time. This turns to be greatest twist at last.

Freedom or Suffering: Post-Partition Memories and Fractured Identity Reflections in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Select Short-Fictions

The liberation of India from British domination in 1947 was the most significant historical event in the South Asian history. Despite the fact that freedom promised only liberty, equality, and fraternity, the only result was widespread violence, which eventually led to British-India being divided into two sovereign dominions (India and Pakistan). This Partition resulted in the loss of houses, properties, friends, relatives, and, most importantly, identity. The purpose of this paper is to look at how Jhumpa Lahiri addresses diasporic concerns, unpleasant partition experiences, and fractured cultural identity in two of her short- stories, “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine” and “A Real Durwan”, from her collection, Interpreter of Maladies. Lahiri, an Indian immigrant from the United Kingdom, is well aware of the difficulties that immigrants experience in their host country. She has brilliantly depicted the painful consequences of partition in the works described above, especially the bloodshed that occurs during the civil war between East and West Pakistan. The goal of this article is to examine how Lahiri uses these two short stories to emphasize the deceiving features of freedom.
 Green University Review of Social Sciences Dec 2021; 7(1-2): 105-111

Cultural Translation, Hybrid Identity, and Third Space in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies

The phenomena of migration, displacement, and social integration have greatly impacted discourses on the interpretation of cultural translation, which is widely perceived as an ongoing reciprocal process of exchange, integration, and transformation. Drawing upon Homi K. Bhabha’s theoretical notions, such as liminality, hybridity, and third space, the present study explores the poetics and politics of cultural translation in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies (1999). More specifically, we examine the multiple ways in which the existing similarities and differences between dominant and marginal cultures influence diasporic individuals and communities and the various ways the migrants respond to their conflicting conditions in the diaspora. A close reading of the three stories of “Mrs. Sen’s,” “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine” and “The Third and Final Continent” reveals that while the liminal situation has the potential to become a site of conflicts in the lives of the migrant subjects, it germinates a condition of hybridity that embraces the diversity of cultures and their blurry borders with one another in the third space. This pattern is perfectly demonstrated through the three characters of Mrs. Sen, Lilia’s mother, and Mala. Their heterogeneous experiences of integration underscore the idea that when two disparate cultural realities confront one another, the female characters welcome a new space where they succeed in negotiating and translating their cultures.

Cultural Translation, Hybrid Identity, and Third Space in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies

The phenomena of migration, displacement, and social integration have greatly impacted discourses on the interpretation of cultural translation, which is widely perceived as an ongoing reciprocal process of exchange, integration, and transformation. Drawing upon Homi K. Bhabha’s theoretical notions, such as liminality, hybridity, and third space, the present study explores the poetics and politics of cultural translation in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies (1999). More specifically, we examine the multiple ways in which the existing similarities and differences between dominant and marginal cultures influence diasporic individuals and communities and the various ways the migrants respond to their conflicting conditions in the diaspora. A close reading of the three stories of “Mrs. Sen’s,” “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine” and “The Third and Final Continent” reveals that while the liminal situation has the potential to become a site of conflicts in the lives of the migrant subjects, it germinates a condition of hybridity that embraces the diversity of cultures and their blurry borders with one another in the third space. This pattern is perfectly demonstrated through the three characters of Mrs. Sen, Lilia’s mother, and Mala. Their heterogeneous experiences of integration underscore the idea that when two disparate cultural realities confront one another, the female characters welcome a new space where they succeed in negotiating and translating their cultures.

Food Metaphor: Reading Food in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies

Food Metaphor: Reading Food in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies

The Analysis of Diaspora Women’s Identity in Interpreter of Maladies from the Perspective of Postcolonial Feminism

The Analysis of Diaspora Women’s Identity in Interpreter of Maladies from the Perspective of Postcolonial Feminism

Review Essay—Jhumpa Lahiri: Between Longing and Belonging

Review Essay—Jhumpa Lahiri: Between Longing and Belonging