Jhumpa Lahiri on Missing Rome

Your story in this week’s issue, “Casting Shadows,” opens on a bridge in an Italian city as a woman and a man meet. When did that image first come to mind? Photograph by Elena Siebert It probably grew out of my frequent crossing of Ponte Garibaldi in Rome, the bridge that takes me from Trastevere and leads to the Jewish Ghetto on the other side of the Tiber, where there is a library, housed in…

The following is a reaction piece to Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Rhode Island.” I usually try to piece together how I feel about what I read in the morning, so welcome to the insanity that is my brain.

Diversity is defined as a “multiplicity of difference, multiformity, or variety,” (“diversity”). The world in general has a long history of the development of diversity through interactions of persons…

Creating Affection and Bonding Despite Culture and Distance in Diaspora

The short story “Interpreter of Maladies” in Jhumpa Lahiri’s short stories collection Interpreter of Maladiesdeals with how ethnicity can lead to familiarization between two individuals and create intimate bonding among them. In the story, Lahiri narrates the two protagonists: Mrs. Das and Mr. Kapasi, who both share the Indian ancestry, would share secrets, or create fantasy on, each other. This…