Its a strange thing, this thing called sense of belonging....it gets complex when you feel that way for more than one place. We are not trees to get rooted in one place and even a tree can be replanted, which means there is no sense of permanency being a tree too. In that case, how does being an immigrant sum up to you?
Jhumpa Lahiri, a renowned author, wrote books like The Namesake, Interpreter of Maladies and The Unaccustomed Earth and having read these books, I relish the nuances of human emotions and subtleties of everyday life through her writing style. In her interview for the Wall Street Journal, she talks of her journey to becoming an Italian author. An American Indian writer whose body of work largely include the experiences of Indian immigrants in USA, it was very interesting to see her perspective on how learning to read, write and talk in a foreign language has helped her overcome social norms of what is culturally accepted of an author with Indian roots after having lived away from India for a long time.
Then I went on to read the translation of the essay Teach Yourself Italian that she wrote in Italian and fell all over in love with the way she writes, albeit translated from Italian. The lucidity with which she expresses her constraints of feeling like the outsider with the languages she speaks provides an insight into a sentiment every immigrant can relate to.
"In a sense I'm used to a kind of linguistic exile. My mother tongue, Bengali, is foreign in America. When you live in a country where your own language is considered foreign, you feel a continuous sense of estrangement. You speak a secret, unknown language, lacking any correspondence to the environment. An absence that creates a distance within you. In my case there is another distance, another schism. I don't know Bengali perfectly. I don't know how to write it, or even read it. I have an accent, I speak without authority, and so I've always perceived a disjunction between it and me. As a result I consider my mother tongue, paradoxically, a foreign language.
As for Italian, the exile has a different aspect. Almost as soon as we met, Italian and I were separated. My yearning seems foolish. And yet I feel it."
And here she goes on to explain why she, someone who has already established her identity as an American Indian author having achieved prestigious awards like The Pulitzer for her book The Namesake, feels the need to write in a different language.....
"Why am I fleeing? What is pursuing me? Who wants to restrain me?
The most obvious answer is the English language. But I think it’s not so much English in itself as everything the language has symbolized for me. For practically my whole life, English has represented a consuming struggle, a wrenching conflict, a continuous sense of failure that is the source of almost all my anxiety. It has represented a culture that had to be mastered, interpreted. I was afraid that it meant a break between me and my parents. English denotes a heavy, burdensome aspect of my past. I’m tired of it."
Lastly from her passage, when she refers to the two-faced Roman god Janus, it puts an image to an immigrant's constant internal battle between what you learnt-to-be in your motherland and what you need-to-learn-to-become in your adopted motherland... two cultural identities
"I think of two-faced Janus. Two faces that look at the past and the future at once. The ancient god of the threshold, of beginnings and endings. He represents a moment of transition. He watches over gates, over doors, a god who is only Roman, who protects the city. A remarkable image that I am about to meet everywhere."
Years ago, I watched a documentary called 'Journey into Amazing Caves' where two cavers Dr.Hazel Barton and Nancy Aulenbach travel to caves in Arizona, Greenland and Mexico searching for discoveries that may lead to cures for human disease. They are in search of extremophiles: organisms that can thrive in extreme conditions. Through their journey they come across extremophiles that can survive in unique environments around the world. The organisms that caught my attention the most were the extremophiles that exist in cenotes in the Yucatan valley. What makes their environment unique is that they live in the layer of halo that forms when river water meets salty sea water. We immigrants are like these extremophiles sandwiched between two different waters/worlds and yet continue to exist in the halo that we create for ourselves that has its own balance.
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Book Review: The Lowland by Jumpa Lahiri
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Jhumpa Lahiri, a renowned author, wrote books like The Namesake, Interpreter of Maladies and The Unaccustomed Earth and having read these books, I relish the nuances of human emotions and subtleties of everyday life through her writing style. In her interview for the Wall Street Journal, she talks of her journey to becoming an Italian author. An American Indian writer whose body of work largely include the experiences of Indian immigrants in USA, it was very interesting to see her perspective on how learning to read, write and talk in a foreign language has helped her overcome social norms of what is culturally accepted of an author with Indian roots after having lived away from India for a long time.
Then I went on to read the translation of the essay Teach Yourself Italian that she wrote in Italian and fell all over in love with the way she writes, albeit translated from Italian. The lucidity with which she expresses her constraints of feeling like the outsider with the languages she speaks provides an insight into a sentiment every immigrant can relate to.
"In a sense I'm used to a kind of linguistic exile. My mother tongue, Bengali, is foreign in America. When you live in a country where your own language is considered foreign, you feel a continuous sense of estrangement. You speak a secret, unknown language, lacking any correspondence to the environment. An absence that creates a distance within you. In my case there is another distance, another schism. I don't know Bengali perfectly. I don't know how to write it, or even read it. I have an accent, I speak without authority, and so I've always perceived a disjunction between it and me. As a result I consider my mother tongue, paradoxically, a foreign language.
As for Italian, the exile has a different aspect. Almost as soon as we met, Italian and I were separated. My yearning seems foolish. And yet I feel it."
And here she goes on to explain why she, someone who has already established her identity as an American Indian author having achieved prestigious awards like The Pulitzer for her book The Namesake, feels the need to write in a different language.....
"Why am I fleeing? What is pursuing me? Who wants to restrain me?
The most obvious answer is the English language. But I think it’s not so much English in itself as everything the language has symbolized for me. For practically my whole life, English has represented a consuming struggle, a wrenching conflict, a continuous sense of failure that is the source of almost all my anxiety. It has represented a culture that had to be mastered, interpreted. I was afraid that it meant a break between me and my parents. English denotes a heavy, burdensome aspect of my past. I’m tired of it."
Lastly from her passage, when she refers to the two-faced Roman god Janus, it puts an image to an immigrant's constant internal battle between what you learnt-to-be in your motherland and what you need-to-learn-to-become in your adopted motherland... two cultural identities
"I think of two-faced Janus. Two faces that look at the past and the future at once. The ancient god of the threshold, of beginnings and endings. He represents a moment of transition. He watches over gates, over doors, a god who is only Roman, who protects the city. A remarkable image that I am about to meet everywhere."
Years ago, I watched a documentary called 'Journey into Amazing Caves' where two cavers Dr.Hazel Barton and Nancy Aulenbach travel to caves in Arizona, Greenland and Mexico searching for discoveries that may lead to cures for human disease. They are in search of extremophiles: organisms that can thrive in extreme conditions. Through their journey they come across extremophiles that can survive in unique environments around the world. The organisms that caught my attention the most were the extremophiles that exist in cenotes in the Yucatan valley. What makes their environment unique is that they live in the layer of halo that forms when river water meets salty sea water. We immigrants are like these extremophiles sandwiched between two different waters/worlds and yet continue to exist in the halo that we create for ourselves that has its own balance.
Posts you may also like:
Book Review: The Lowland by Jumpa Lahiri
Part One - Weekend trip to Sequoia National Park
Very interesting. I know that when you are away from home it can feel that way, personally I never really found a "place" I feel like I belonged to. I never considered it from a language perspective.
ReplyDeleteRaising kids who don't speak my native language, I can see what she means about the disconnect! I've always felt like NYC is my 'place' Thanks for the comment Heidi!
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