Existing comment:
Jhumpa Lahiri
born 1967
Born London, England
Born in London to Bengali parents, Jhumpa Lahiri moved to Rhode Island at age two. She has said that while growing up, she did not feel fully at home in the United States or in India: "At many times in my life, I wished I could be like any other American . . . feel really a part of it, really woven into it. I couldn't. I just couldn't do it. And all of my writing has come out of that."
As an adult, Lahiri earned three master's degrees and a doctorate before pursuing a literary career. Shortly thereafter, she became a signal voice of the South Asian immigrant experience in the United States and won the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/ Hemingway Award for her debut short-story collection, The Interpreter of Maladies (1999). Lahiri's novel The Lowlands (2013) was a bestseller and finalist for the National Book Award.
In David Levine's caricature of Lahiri, which first accompanied a review of The Namesake (2003), he portrayed her in a traditional Indian sari, seated on the floor with a computer.
David Levine (1926–2009)
Ink over graphite on paper, 2003 |