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Jhumpa Lahiri Biography

Nilanjana Sudeshna "Jhumpa" Lahiri (Bengali: ঝুম্পা লাহিড়ী; born on July 11, 1967) is an American author. Lahiri has been selected as the winner of the 29th PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short story. Lahiri's debut short story collection Interpreter of Maladies (1999) won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and her first novel, The Namesake (2003), was adapted into the popular film of the same name. She was born Nilanjana Sudeshna but goes by her nickname Jhumpa. Lahiri was a member of the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities, appointed by U.S. President Barack Obama. (She resigned from the President's Committee in August, 2017, co-signing a letter of resignation that said in reference to President Trump, "Ignoring your hateful rhetoric would have made us complicit in your words and actions.") Her book The Lowland, published in 2013, was a nominee for the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Award for Fiction. Lahiri is currently a professor of creative writing at Princeton University.

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Jhumpa Lahiri Quotes

And yet she could not forgive herself. Even as an adult, she wished only that she could go back and change things: the ungainly things she’d worn, the insecurity she’d felt, all the innocent mistakes she made.

Adult, Forgive, Innocent, Insecurity, Life, Mistake

While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination. " (from "The Third and Final Continent")

Achievement, Hero, Home, Imagination, Men, Mile

Isolation offered its own form of companionship

Companionship, Form, Isolation, Offered

Gogol is unaccustomed to this sort of talk at mealtimes, to the indulgent ritual of the lingering meal, and the pleasant aftermath of bottles and crumbs and empty glasses that clutter the table.

Aftermath, Glasses, Indulgent, Meals, Pleasant

You are still young, free. . Do yourself a favor. Before it's too late, without thinking too much about it first, pack a pillow and a blanket and see as much of the world as you can. You will not regret it. One day it will be too late.

Favor, Inspiring, Motivational, Pillow, Regret, Travel

In New York I was always so scared of saying that I wrote fiction. It just seemed like, 'Who am I to dare to do that thing here? The epicenter of publishing and writers?' I found all that very intimidating and avoided writing as a response.

Avoided, Fiction, New York, Publishing, Saying, Writing

Fiction is the only way I know a human being can inhabit the mind of another human being.

Fiction, Inhabit, Mind, Way

My parents had an arranged marriage, as did so many other people when I was growing up. My father came and had a life in the United States one way and my mother had a different one, and I was very aware of those things. I continue to wonder about it, and I will continue to write about it.

Different, Father, Growing Up, Marriage, Mother, Wonder

I would not send a first story anywhere. I would give myself time to write a number of stories.

Give, Giving, Numbers, Story, Write, Writing

He owned an expensive camera that required thought before you pressed the shutter, and I quickly became his favorite subject, round-faced, missing teeth, my thick bangs in need of a trim. They are still the pictures of myself I like best, for they convey that confidence of youth I no longer possess, especially in front of a camera.

Bangs, Cameras, Front, Missing, Pictures, Subject

Each day she removes a small portion of the unwanted things in people's lives, though all of it, she thinks, was previously wanted, once useful. She feels the sun scorching the back of her neck. The heat is at its worst now, the rains still a few months away. The task satisfies her. It passes the time.

Feels, Neck, People, Rain, Satisfies, Thinking

You remind me of everything that followed.

Everything, Followed, Namesake, Remind

And wasn't it terrible, how much he looked forward to those moments, so much so that sometimes even a ride by himself on the subway was the best part of the day? Wasn't it terrible that after all the work one put into finding a person to spend one's life with, after making a family with that person, even in spite of missing that person. . . that solitude was what one relished the most, the only thing that, even in fleeting, diminished doses, kept one sane?

Fleeting, Missing, Part, Solitude, Spend, Terrible

I've seen novels that have grown out of one story in a collection. But it hasn't occurred to me to take any of those stories and build on them. They seem very finished for me, so I don't feel like going back and dredging them up.

Collection, Dredging, Finished, Novel, Novels, Stories

And yet he had loved her. A Bookish girl heedless of her beauty, unconscious of her effect. She'd been prepared to live her life alone but from the moment he'd known her he'd needed her.

Bookish, Girl, Heedless, Her Beauty, Life, Moments

With children the clock is reset. We forget what came before

Children, Clock, Forget

The first sentence of a book is a handshake, perhaps an embrace.

Book, Embrace, Firsts, Perhaps

Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.

Appears, Bewildered, Eaten, Imagination, Meals, Ordinary

That's what books are for. . . to travel without moving an inch.

Book, Books, Inch, Moving, Travel

On the screen I saw tanks rolling through dusty streets, and fallen buildings, and forests of unfamiliar trees into which East Pakistani refugees had fled, seeking safety over the Indian border.

Dusty, Fallen, Safety, Saws, Tree, Unfamiliar

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