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Jhumpa
Lahiri ’89 Returns to Campus to Read from her Bestseller
The Namesake
 Jhumpa
Lahiri ’89 returned to campus on Thursday, October 16,
to read from her new novel, The Namesake. About 800
people gathered in McIntosh Center for the event, packing
both the lower level, where she spoke to a standing-room-only
crowd, and the upper level, where the reading was simulcast
on a projection television.
The Namesake, which The New York Times has called
"quietly dazzling" and is currently on the New
York Times bestseller list, follows an immigrant Indian
family as they settle in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The excerpt
she read, from chapter three of the novel, focuses on the
immigrant couple’s son, Gogol, as he begins to understand
the unusual nature of his name. The very idea for the story,
she told the audience during the question and answer session
after the reading, came from knowing a Bengali boy named Gogol.
The boy’s name sparked something in her, and, she explained,
"it made me think about how names can change between
time and space."
Lahiri, herself the daughter of immigrant Bengali parents,
briefly discussed her own experiences as a child, when she"was
very aware that [she] was being raised quite differently."
She said that "maybe what I was picking up on was the
sense that many foreigners, at least my parents, could never
fully relax. For some time and even today, and they’ve
been here for 30 years, they still are facing challenges.
Sometimes on a daily basis. Other people, reactions, attitudes,
what have you. So I think I was just very sensitive to that
difference."
When asked about technical elements in her work, Lahiri replied
humbly, "I’m not in the habit of analyzing my own
work in an a intelligent way." But she was able to share
her influences, naming William Trever, James Joyce, Mavis
Gallant, Alice Monroe, Bernard Malamud, and Flannery O’Connor
as "people [she] never tires of and always learns something
every time [she] reads their work."
The reading was part of Barnard’s new Books Etc series,
initiated to recognize the College’s remarkable community
of faculty, alumnae and visiting writing instructors. As President
Judith Shapiro noted in her introductory remarks, Barnard
counts over 1,300 alumnae who have published books in the
past 40 years, chronicled in the Alumnae
Bibliography. The series has already included readings
and remarks by Lynne Tillman and Alice Walker, and will continue
this fall with readings by Ursula Hegi and Anna Quindlen.
Click here for more information on the Books
Etc. series.
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