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Names and the Journey to Define a Multicultural Identity in Jhumpa Lahiri’S the Namesake

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Names and the Journey to Define a Multicultural Identity in Jhumpa Lahiri’S the Namesake 【연구논문】 Names and the Journey to Define a Multicultural Identity in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake Laura Ahn (Seoul National University) I. Introduction Of those who write ethnic minority literature, the vast majority have written about their own experiences living as a racial minority in America, or about the experiences of other people from different homelands who have made their own journey to America as transnational immigrants and adjust to living in their new surroundings.1) Jhumpa 1) The term transnationalism was first coined by Randolph Bourne in his 1916 article “Trans-National America” where he wrote about the failure of the melting pot theory and how assimilation did not “Americanize” immigrants but made them cling all the more tightly to the cultures of their homelands. See also Waldinger and Fitzgerald’s “Transnationalism in Question” for their argument that the term “transnational” does not mean “transnational― extending beyond loyalties that connect to any specific place of origin or ethnic or national group,” but instead “highly particularistic attachments antithetical to those by-products of globalization denoted by the concept of ‘transnational civil society’ and its related manifestations” (1178). Finding that transnationalism is not the appropriate term to describe the 100 Laura Ahn Lahiri may be seen as another of these writers as her works are, not unlike many other Asian American works, fictional stories that capture the essence of very real experiences of immigrant families in America and the palpable generation gap between parents and children.2) In The Namesake (2003), Lahiri introduces the reader to a story about the happiness and hardships of the Ganguli family who originate from India.3) The main portion of the text is devoted to the character of Gogol Ganguli and his struggles as a second generation phenomena of human immigration, Braziel and Mannur argue that the term “diaspora” should be used instead. What many people refer to as “transnationalism,” Braziel and Mannur define as “diaspora” in order to make a clear distinction between the human phenomena of migration and displacement with the movement of goods and information across national borders. 2) In his interview with The New York Times about his life as a reader, former President Barack Obama praised both Junot Diaz and Jhumpa Lahiri for their works because they “speak to a very particular contemporary immigration experience. But also this combination of―that I think is universal―longing for this better place, but also feeling displaced and looking backwards at the same time.” He continued by saying that, “in that sense, their novels are directly connected to a lot of American literature” (Kakutani). 3) See “Spicing it up,” Sarvate’s review of The Mango Season by Indian novelist Amulya Malladi for more on the increase of Indian American literature today of “not only fiction by writers like Salman Rushdie, who can be blamed for starting the fad, and V. S. Naipaul, who belonged to the generation before Rushdie and won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2001; but also writers like Arundhati Roy, whose first book, The God of Small Things, won the Booker Prize for portraying her Indian family with an unmistakable Western sensibility” as well as Pulitzer winner Jhumpa Lahiri, Amitav Ghosh, Vikram Chandra, and Vikram Singh (36). See also Bhalla’s “Being (and Feeling) Gogol: Reading and Recognition in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake” for more on the diversity of responses to The Namesake, and South Asian literature in general, depending on the type of reader. Names and the Journey to Define a Multicultural Identity 101 Indian American; but a fair portion of the text is also allocated to the experiences of his parents Ashoke and Ashima as new immigrants from India. What sets The Namesake apart from other literary works written about the American immigrant experience is that Lahiri cleverly uses the names of her characters to shape their individual lives and futures not just as a mere first or second generation immigrant, but as people who are more than what that labelling connotes.4) The comparison and contrast between Gogol’s experiences and Ashima’s are interesting to note as both characters grow to fulfill the meanings of their names in different ways. For Gogol who was named after his father’s favourite Russian author Nikolai Gogol, his struggle to make sense of his own destiny on his own terms leads him on a journey of self-reflection and self-discovery that continuously challenges his own previous ideas of who he is. For Ashima whose name means “she who is limitless, without borders” (26), her journey enables her to “grow into” her name by the end of the story by maturing into a woman who is truly “without borders” through her life spent in America. Although the struggle faced by Ashima and her husband Ashoke to hold on and adapt as first generation immigrants is contrasted with the search for identity among second generation immigrants seen primarily through the experiences of their children Gogol and Sonia, Lahiri uses their struggles as an immigrant family to serve as a starting point for each member of the Ganguli family to find their own identities and 4) See Sen’s review of The Namesake for more on how Lahiri writes about “people who need to make sense of their own destinies, in their own terms” (10). She writes that Lahiri steers away from providing easy answers, and offers her readers a complex look into the immigrant experience. 102 Laura Ahn understandings of who they are as individuals apart from their race, history or cultural heritage so that they all may truly be “without borders.” II. The Struggle to Hold on and Adapt among First Generation Immigrants The Namesake follows the story of the Ganguli family as Ashoke and Ashima immigrate to the United States and build a family there with the birth of their children Gogol and Sonia. For Ashoke and Ashima, the challenge is to reconcile their Bengali customs with their new American way of life, while Gogol and Sonia must learn how to be American without losing their rich West Bengali heritage. The struggle that Ashoke and Ashima face is to live as members of American society while still trying to hold on to as much of their Bengali culture as they can in a new world where nothing is familiar to them. In his review of Lahiri’s second collection of short stories Unaccustomed Earth, Ed Minus makes an observation that “cultural unease is Lahiri’s pervasive subject, and her accounts and, to a lesser degree, her analyses of such distress are sharply observant” but goes on to criticize her by writing that, “it is not, I think, unjust to remark that she gives more attention to clothes and food than to, for example, politics, religion, and language” (lxxxiv). What Minus fails to understand is that Lahiri giving “more attention to clothes and food than to, for example, politics, religion, and language” is not a reason to criticize her. He does not seem to understand the Names and the Journey to Define a Multicultural Identity 103 importance of food and clothing as a sign of cultural identity for any new immigrant to a new country.5) Out of all the people groups found in the modern world, it is easily observed that Arabs and Indians prominently persist in wearing their traditional clothes on a daily basis. Ashima herself never fails to appear in the text in her traditional sari and sandals except for the day she was required to put on a hospital gown in preparation for giving birth to Gogol. The first scene described in The Namesake is also notable as it is of Ashima attempting to recreate a familiar snack that is particularly special to the people living in West Bengal and using American ingredients in her Cambridge home in the United States to concoct it.6) Ashima’s craving for true Indian fare, also felt by the other members of her family at various points in the novel, is significant as it symbolizes her deep-rooted connection to her motherland.7) This craving for true homeland fare is also true of other first generation 5) Eileen Chang (張愛玲, Zhāng Ailíng) is another Asian American diaspora writer who is known for writing about things that may seem superficial at first glance, but prove to be deeply significant. In her introduction to Eileen Chang’s writing, Sheets writes, “Written in simple and direct language, her deeply moral and realistic stories focus on the tragic ironies of human experience. They are replete with metaphors, symbolism, and imagery” (Eileen). 6) This snack that is sold only on trains in West Bengal is called Bhelpuri in Hindi or Jhal Muri in Bengali (meaning “hot puffed rice”). I am grateful to Professor Earl Jackson for his extensive knowledge on West Bengali culture based on his own experiences in India and for the other cultural references about India that he shared with me during our discussions about The Namesake that I made substantial use of throughout this article. 7) See Williams’ “Foodways and Subjectivity in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies” for more on how “food as metaphor frequently constructs and reflects relationships to racialized subjectivity and also addresses issues of authenticity, assimilation, and desire” in Asian American literature (70). 104 Laura Ahn immigrants who often must use the ingredients available to them in their new country to replicate familiar foods from their home country as well. The significance of ethnic foods is a common topic in ethnic writing because one way for immigrants to keep from assimilating into a new culture is to reject its food.8) Evidence of Ashima doing so can be found multiple times in the text when she is seen cooking Indian fare for her family and her friends on many different occasions.9) As a culture’s food is an essential part of the culture, the descriptions of the meals partaken by the characters in the text are especially important.
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