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Lahiri, Jhumpa (1967– )
Born in London to Bengali parents, Lahiri was
raised in South Kingstown, Rhode Island, and
discovered at an early age her passion for creative
writing and for documenting the complex lives
of Indian immigrants and their children. Her fa-
ther, a librarian at the University of Rhode Island,
and her mother, a professor of Bengali, encour-
aged their daughter to retain her Indian identity
through observing Bengali tradition, but as an
adolescent, Lahiri perceived a profound divide be-
tween her parents’ heritage and her own develop-
ing American identity.
Growing up in two distinct cultural worlds, La-
hiri often felt there was no place to which she fully
belonged. This sense of existing at the margins of
all cultures permeates her fiction and motivates
her characters to constantly search for places to
call home. “The older I get,” Lahiri declares, “the
more aware I am that I have somehow inherited
a sense of exile from my parents, even though in
many ways—superficial ones, largely—I am so
much more American than they are” (News India
Times). Familial ties to India, particularly Calcutta,
meant frequent trips to visit relatives, sometimes
for months at a time during Lahiri’s youth, and
though she felt a connection to her parents’ home-
land and its people, she felt like an outsider in
India: “No country is my motherland. I always find
myself in exile in whichever country I travel to,

that’s why I was tempted to write something about

those living their lives in exile” (Jawaid). These

trips abroad, however, provided her with invalu-

able opportunities to observe Calcutta society and

culture and to later render in her fictional writings

many of the fascinating individuals, places, and

experiences she encountered. Crafting stories that

explore questions of identity construction and

cross-cultural belonging allows Lahiri to confront

her own feelings of confusion and loss. “Through

my characters,” she says, “I can figure things out

about myself ” (Solan 37).

Despite her early interest in writing, Lahiri

chose as a teenager to follow a scholarly path, rel-

egating creative writing to a pastime, in the pur-

suit of higher education. After graduating from

Barnard College with a bachelor of arts in English

in 1989, she went on to Boston University to re-

ceive master of arts degrees in English, creative

writing, and comparative studies in literature. She

then completed her Ph.D. in Renaissance studies

at Boston University. Though she excelled in her

scholarship, she did not believe that her future lay

in academic teaching but rather in creative writ-

ing. It was during her graduate school years that

she began sincerely to write and to pursue publi-

cation, initially encountering modest success with

a few literary magazines. Following the comple-

tion of her Ph.D. dissertation, she worked briefly

as a research assistant at a nonprofit organization

L