30 pages • 1 hour read
Jhumpa LahiriA Temporary Matter
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1998A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: Jhumpa Lahiri
Lahiri was born in London in 1967. By age three, she moved to America, and she considers herself to be an American writer. Her father served as a librarian at the University of Rhode Island, so she was around literature from a young age. After high school, Lahiri attended Barnard College of Columbia University for a BA and then Boston University for a dual MA, an MFA, and a PhD. Her graduate studies primarily focused on Renaissance studies, comparative literature, and creative writing. Lahiri published her first short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, within a year after graduating from Boston University.
Lahiri’s fiction is often semiautobiographical in its thematic exploration of the Indian American experience, primarily in Boston and New York City. Lahiri is of Bengali descent, and her stories explore the experiences of Indian Americans as they reconcile their cultural heritage with the process of assimilation. Lahiri’s mother frequently brought her to stay with family in Calcutta, or Kolkata, as a child, so Lahiri often felt torn between these two worlds. As a result, Lahiri’s writing falls under the genre of postcolonial literature, a genre aimed at addressing the struggles of colonized nations in the aftermath of their independence.
After Interpreter of Maladies was published, it received the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, a very rare accomplishment for a short story collection. Lahiri went on to publish novels that depict the immigrant experience, such as The Namesake (2003) and The Lowland (2013), as well as another collection of short stories titled Unaccustomed Earth (2008). Lahiri has lived in Rome and New York City since the publication of Interpreter of Maladies.
Literary Context: Indian American Culture
Lahiri’s Bengali heritage is front and center in her fiction. Subsequently, her writing style is both tremendously personal and universally transcendent. In one sense, Lahiri is speaking for a culture that is largely underrepresented in the American literary canon. Although Indian Americans represent the second-largest immigrant group in the United States, there is not a proportionate reflection of their experience in its literature. Lahiri’s fiction gives a voice to this large—and growing—subset of the American population.
Lahiri’s fiction also gives a voice to all immigrants and children of immigrants, regardless of ethnicity. The themes and topics she explores—assimilation to another culture, losing or maintaining cultural identity, being torn between two cultural identities—are cultural experiences often shared by immigrants and their ensuing generations. These poignant themes resonate with wider audiences, and the popularity of her work transcends cultures.
Indian Americans, and Asian Americans more broadly, often navigate the stereotype of being a “model minority”—implying that they achieve a higher degree of socioeconomic success than the norm. Subsequently, they should serve as a “model” for other minority groups. This stereotype, along with its racist underpinnings, downplays and homogenizes the experience of Asian Americans. While “A Temporary Matter” does not address this stereotype directly, Lahiri offers a lens into the daily struggles of second-generation Indian Americans.
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