Redefining Identity in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake

Abstract

Jhumpa Lahiri, born in London in 1967 is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Lahiri’s characters are often immigrants from India or children of immigrants who deal with issues of cultural displacement, marital troubles and issues of identity. Lahiri was born to Bengali parents from Calcutta. Her father a university librarian and her mother a schoolteacher who moved to London and then to the United States, settling in South Kingstown, Rhode Island, when she was young. Her diasporic experience is reflected in her novels. This paper analyses how the immigrant characters in her novel The Namesake redefine their identity being caught between two cultures.