Interpreter of Maladies: Lahiri’s Guide to Forging One’s Identity Madeline Bilbra College

In her collection of short stories entitled Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri illustrates the difficulties that immigrants face when displaced and distanced from their culture. Each story serves as a different viewpoint on cultural experience, which allows Lahiri to bring together a detailed image of cultural displacement and the challenges it poses when forging one’s identity. The importance of cultural ties is emphasized in the stories, as is the natural longing to achieve such connections. However, Lahiri shows the difficulties in doing so, especially with a younger generation that has only family ties to their culture because they have already been assimilated into American society. She also illustrates that distance is not always a disadvantage as she begins to show the reader the first steps to establishing one’s identity and home. The stories in the collection Interpreter of Maladies illustrate the need and natural inclination people have to connect with their heritage and culture while conveying how to safely make those connections and forge one’s identity.

In Lahiri’s stories, there is a longing among the people of the younger generations to connect with their culture, a longing that seems impossible for those...