Jhumpa Lahiri was born in London, raised in Rhode Island, and went to college in New York and Boston. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and author of two previous books. Her debut collection of stories, Interpreter of Maladies, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, making her the first person of South Asia descent to ever win an individual Pulitzer award, the PEN/Hemingway Award and The New Yorker Debut of the Year. Since then, the book has been translated into 29 languages and has become a bestseller in the United States and abroad. One of the stories from Interpreter of Maladies, “The Third and Final Continent,” was published in “The New Yorker” magazine in 1999 and received numerous awards. Her novel The Namesake was a New York Times Notable Book, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist and was selected as one of the best books of the year by USA Today and Entertainment Weekly, among other publications.
Below is a link to a short interview with Ms. Lahiri entitled, Jhumpa Lahiri's Struggle to Feel American. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97418330
Here is a PDF of the story, "Third and Final Continent."
Students and faculty, please feel free to join any or all of the discussion threads below.
b) What does Mrs. Croft symbolize to the narrator, and in what ways does she have an impact on his life? As you reflect upon the experiences you have had in a foreign culture, do you recall meeting a figure like a Mrs. Croft? Describe this person and his/her effect on you.
c) What does it mean to feel as if you "belong" to a culture, to fit in, and to feel grounded? What is your cultural heritage, and to what extent do you assimilate with the culture of Italy? To what degree are those who have a foot in two or more cultures destined to feel caught betwixt and between, to be neither fish nor fowl?
d) What does the following quotation reveal about the ways the narrator, Mala and their son celebrate and preserve the cultures they embody: "So we drive to Cambridge to visit him, or bring him home for a weekend, so that he can eat rice with us with his hands, and speak in Bengali, things we sometimes worry he will no longer do after we die." In what ways do you acknowledge and preserve your home culture? Do your parents worry that over time your cultural heritage might diminish and that important family traditions might fade? If you worry about this as well, explore the implications for yourself.
e) Though an outsider, Lahiri's narrator captures the inherent beauties of living on different continents. With this in mind how do you interpret the final lines of the story?
Below is a link to a short interview with Ms. Lahiri entitled, Jhumpa Lahiri's Struggle to Feel American. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97418330
Here is a PDF of the story, "Third and Final Continent."
Students and faculty, please feel free to join any or all of the discussion threads below.
c) What does it mean to feel as if you "belong" to a culture, to fit in, and to feel grounded? What is your cultural heritage, and to what extent do you assimilate with the culture of Italy? To what degree are those who have a foot in two or more cultures destined to feel caught betwixt and between, to be neither fish nor fowl?
d) What does the following quotation reveal about the ways the narrator, Mala and their son celebrate and preserve the cultures they embody: "So we drive to Cambridge to visit him, or bring him home for a weekend, so that he can eat rice with us with his hands, and speak in Bengali, things we sometimes worry he will no longer do after we die." In what ways do you acknowledge and preserve your home culture? Do your parents worry that over time your cultural heritage might diminish and that important family traditions might fade? If you worry about this as well, explore the implications for yourself.
e) Though an outsider, Lahiri's narrator captures the inherent beauties of living on different continents. With this in mind how do you interpret the final lines of the story?
