Abstract Calling on both theoretical and critical womanist texts and the recent fiction of Jhumpa Lahiri -- her two recent works explored are her novel The Namesake and short story and novella collection Unaccustomed Earth -- this thesis seeks to show how Lahiri both exemplifies and proposes a redefinition of womanism in her work. Lahiri best exemplifies the family-centeredness of Africana womanism, the most thoroughly articulated theory of womanism to date, in her narratives of Bengali- American families, whose members well describe both physical and cultural maternity, a great tenet of womanism as defined by womanism scholars Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi and Clenora Hudson-Weems. However, in questioning both Hudson-Weems and Layli Phillips’ notions of womanism that can be customizable for any culture, I propose a revision and thorough articulation of “Indian” or “Bengali” womanism as explored by Lahiri, adding characteristics such as intergenerational exchange. These articulations lead to greater questions (too large to explore in this thesis) of womanism and of “Indian womanism” which have yet to be explored, but which Lahiri introduces and complicates.

An American author who is regarded as being a masterful storyteller when it comes to the struggle with immigrant identity is Jhumpa Lahiri. Those who have read her work would most likely agree with me that her texts provide the reader with an intimate and realistic insight into what it is like living between two or several cultures. How does she create this intimacy and feeling of first-hand immigrant experience? One defining feature of Lahiri’s writing is that she leaves many questions unanswered. In other words, there is an endless amount of “gaps” in her texts that it is up to the reader to fill with meaning. This is, from my point of view, an experience very true to life as there are many questions in life we can begin to attempt to answer. Along the journey towards finding an answer, you realize that you have simply ended up with even more questions unanswered. As Lahiri’s writing contains so much ambiguity, the text invites the reader to actively search for alternative interpretations, which is also a feature of this essay.

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A Mouthful of Silence is a novel set in Manchester. It is about a middle-aged Indian man, PK Monghia, who is full of regrets and bitterness about getting old and the steady decline of his business. He still has an appetite for love and happiness, but feels trapped in his marriage to Geeta. Their only child, Sammy, is a disappointment too. Born after several miscarriages, he is the focus of excessive maternal devotion on the part of Geeta and an object of contempt in the eyes of PK, who wanted a sporty son, a reflection of his own golden youth. A new woman enters the barren landscape of PK's emotional life. She is Esther Solomon, rich, beautiful, vivacious. She is all that his life is not. She also happens to be the wife of a competitor, Cedric Solomon, who is successful and powerful and a constant reminder of what PK might have been. PK and Esther are drawn to each other and embark on a love affair that distracts PK and fills him with guilt that he pushes aside time and again. PK begins neglecting his business and his family, and he fails to notice his son's growing friendship and obsession with a more street-wise girl, Alice. Sammy gradually changes from a molly-coddled boy into a surly, uncommunicative teenager with secrets. Geeta meanwhile watches the slow unravelling of her family life, and PK is never quite sure whether she has discovered his affair. Events unfold that compel PK to make choices. He is forced to confront his ambiguous morality and to question the nature and meaning of love in all its guises. My thesis explores the main theoretical approaches surrounding diaspora and the concepts of home, belonging and nostalgia. It is my aim to extrapolate from the theoretical framework and apply their relevance and limitations to the study of the diasporic condition. My primary focus will be on the Indian diaspora within the United States and its portrayal in Bharati Mukherjee and Jhumpa Lahiri's short fiction. More specifically, I wish to look closely at how nostalgia is both employed as a method and represented as a theme in creating and/or shaping the sense of belonging and home within their fictional narratives. Finally, I will place their work within the larger context of diaspora literature and analyse the overall diasporic literary response to established and often problematic understandings of nostalgia, home and belonging.

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S’inspirant de l’expérience récente de la migration indienne aux Etats-Unis, la fiction de Jhumpa Lahiri se demande si tant la nation que l’individu sont en mesure de revoir les termes mêmes de leur identité. Jhumpa Lahiri met l’accent sur l’adaptation à l’étranger en tant que processus de longue haleine. Car le changement ne prend pas, dans ce contexte, l’aspect d’une transformation subite ; il s’agit davantage d’une lente négociation entre une tradition surdéterminante et un futur sous-défini. Le meilleur éclairage que l’on puisse apporter à cette littérature de la diaspora, qui gagne en consistance et en légitimité avec l’avènement de la mondialisation, est offert par les outils de la critique postcoloniale. Bien qu’elle soit issue d’un contexte politique, cette école de pensée trouve sa pertinence dans la façon qu’elle a de poser les problèmes afférant à la possibilité de surmonter un passé conflictuel. Comment accepter l’étranger en soi ? Que faire de cette culture qui n’offre pas d’autre choix que celui de la capitulation ? Dans quelle mesure peut-on imaginer une identité où les conflits nés de valeurs contradictoires seraient ramenés à leur plus simple expression ? Notre essai consiste à découvrir de quelle manière le déplacement dû à l’exil induit une série de stratégies de préservation et de transformations identitaires. En dernier ressort, nous nous interrogerons sur les retombées de la conception lahirienne de l’identité, puisque cette romancière semble considérer que les racines et les traditions ne sont que d’une toute relative utilité lorsque l’on se trouve en terre étrangère. / Drawing its inspiration from the experience of Indian migrants to the United States, Jhumpa Lahiri’s fiction questions the nation as well as the individual’s abilities to accept reconfiguring their own terms. Jhumpa Lahiri’s works emphasize the day-to-day process of adaptation to foreignness. For change is not a matter of sudden transformation in this particular context; it is rather a slow negotiation between an over-determining tradition and an under-defined future. This literature of diaspora, which is gaining strength and legitimacy in today’s global era, is best understood by applying postcolonial critique tools to its study. Though derived from a political context, this school of thought is pertinent in the ways it questions the possibilities of overcoming a conflicting past. How to accept the alien in ourselves? How to deal with the culture that offers no other way than capitulation? To what extent an identity that is most devoid of conflicts between foreign values can be imagined? Our endeavor consists in uncovering how the dis-placement due to exile triggers of a variety of self-preservative or self-transformative strategies. Finally, we are most concerned with the outcome of Jhumpa Lahiri’s conception of identity, since she seems to suggest that roots and traditions are of little use in a foreign land.

Thesis advisor: Judith Wilt / Experience as an English major, a bookseller, a publishing intern, and a reader has formed questions in my mind about why people read what they do. My interest is focused in two particular "categories" of literature that vie for readers' attention: book clubs and literary awards. Because my skills are in literary interpretation and not societal or industrial analysis, I explored this supposed dichotomy by reading and comparing books from each category. In the "book club" books (My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult and The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards), I found a remarkable familial structure at the core: a daughter with a medical condition; a mother struggling to cope emotionally; a father who distances himself through work and offers profound symbolism via a hobby; an older brother who rebels; an outside couple, professionally involved in the action and romantically involved in each other. The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction-winning books, Gilead by Marilynne Robinson and Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, stretch farther with voice, style, and imagery. I found them intellectually and personally more satisfying. In addition pursuing academic interests, I also grew to better understand the variety of purposes for which we read. Though I concluded that if all four novels were to be labeled, they should simply be named "middlebrow," I came to appreciate different writers' strengths — research, personal experience, mastery of language — even when they do not match my personal criteria as a reader. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2008. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: English. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

This thesis studies two novels: The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi and The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. There are characters with hybrid qualities in each novel and they tend to use or encouraged to use mimicry to find their identities and establish themselves in the cultures they live. Hence, the result of mimicry is ambivalence on both sides, the colonizer and the colonized. The first chapter is dedicated to explaining the theory of hybridity based on the ideas of leading theoreticians like, Homi Bhabha, Robert Young and others. The situation, problems and the coping strategies of character are studied in detail, in individual sections. The final chapter is dedicated to the comparison of the hybrid situations of the second generation male and female characters. Eventually it is seen that all hybrid characters, especially the second generation immigrants use mimicry to create their own &lsquo / Third Space&rsquo / and find their own voices to exist in their environment.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--West Virginia University, 2009. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains vi, 178 p. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 163-178).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Illinois State University, 2006. / Title from title page screen, viewed on May 3, 2007. Dissertation Committee: Charles Harris (chair), Ronald Strickland, Wail Hassan. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 325-346) and abstract. Also available in print.