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Jhumpa Lahiri

Personal Profile

Jhumpa Lahiri
  • Date of Birth:
    July 11, 1967
  • Zodiac Sign:
    Cancer
  • Place of Birth:
    London, England
  • Sex:
    Female
  • Nationality:
    American
  • Education:
    Graduated from South Kingstown High School
    Barnard College

Family

Jhumpa Lahiri
  • Spouse:
    Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush
  • Son:
    Octavio
  • Daughter:
    Noor

Career

Jhumpa Lahiri

Trivia

Jhumpa Lahiri
  • Taught creative writing at Boston University and the Rhode Island School of Design.
  • Took up a fellowship at Provincetown's Fine Arts Work Center, which lasted for the next two years (1997–1998).
  • Received multiple degrees from Boston University: an M.A. in English, an M.A. in Creative Writing, an M.A. in Comparative Literature and a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies.
  • Graduated from South Kingstown High School, and received her B.A. in English literature from Barnard College in 1989.
  • Her ambivalence over her identity was the inspiration for the ambivalence of Gogol, the protagonist of her novel The Namesake, over his unusual name.
  • When she began kindergarten in Kingston, Lahiri's teacher decided to call her by her pet name, Jhumpa, because it was easier to pronounce than her "good names".
  • Her mother wanted her children to grow up knowing of their Bengali heritage and her family often visited relatives in Calcutta, India.
  • Grew up in Kingston, Rhode Island, where her father worked as a librarian at the University of Rhode Island;[4] the protagonist of Lahiri's story "The Third and Final Continent" is based on her father.
  • Her family moved to the United States when she was three; Lahiri considers herself an American, stating, "I wasn't born here, but I might as well have been."
  • Was born in London, the daughter of Bengali Indian immigrants.

Biography

Jhumpa Lahiri
Last Updated: Monday, May 11, 2009

Though born in London, Jhumpa Lahiri, the daughter of Indian immigrants, moved to Rhode Island when she was three. She studied English Literature at Barnard College, and subsequently earned masters degrees in English, Comparative Literature, and Creative Writing, as well as a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies, from Boston University. Lahiri taught creative writing at both Boston University and The Rhode Island School of Design.

Jhumpa Lariri's Writing:  Jhumpa Lahiri won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the PEN/Hemingway Award for Interpreter of Maladies, a 1999 collection of short stories she wrote while at Boston University. In 2003, she followed up with a novel, The Namesake, tracing the lives of a Bengali family who has emigrated to the United States. In her most recent book, Unaccustomed Earth, Lahiri returned to the short form in stories that followed the movements of people, who like her previous characters, were similarly uprooted.

Unaccustomed Earth takes its title from a Nathaniel Hawthorne quotation referring to the new soil in which children of immigrants sink their roots, and it very much describes the struggles of Lahiri's second generation American characters. Like in her earlier works, Lahiri also addresses themes of family, love, and loss, as well as the alienation inherent in the Indian-American immigrant experience.

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