Naming Jhumpa Lahiri - by Lavina Dhingra & Floyd Cheung (Paperback)

About the Book

This collection of nine essays by scholars in the fields of postcolonial, Asian American, and other literary studies explains why categorizing the best-selling, award-winning work of Jhumpa Lahiri as either universally "great" and/or ethnically specific matters, to whom, and h...

Book Synopsis

This collection of nine essays by scholars in the fields of postcolonial, Asian American, and other literary studies explains why categorizing the best-selling, award-winning work of Jhumpa Lahiri as either universally "great" and/or ethnically specific matters, to whom, and how paying attention to these questions can deepen students', general readers', and academic scholars' appreciation for the politics surrounding Lahiri's works and understanding of the literary texts themselves.

Review Quotes

This dynamic first collection on Lahiri's fiction addresses accepted, conflicting, and evolving definitions about family, nationality, home, ethnic-global movement, and canonicity that her work and literary popularity raise. Its scholarly alliances and divergences guarantee that it will continue to provoke such necessary debate.


This timely volume expands our understanding of Jhumpa Lahiri's universe by engaging the ways she creates spaces where identities shift and coalesce in unexpected but surprisingly true ways. The thoughtful essays tease out the ways narrative form and structure reflect the creative intelligence that produces works of art. Congratulations to the editors for a superb collection!

About the Author

Editors:
Lavina Dhingra is Professor of English at Bates College, and has served as Faculty Associate Dean of Admissions from 2006-2009. She is the contributing co-editor of A Part, Yet Apart: South Asians in Asian America (Temple University Press, 1998) and is completing a book manuscript on South Asian American women's literature. She has published wide-ranging essays on South Asian American issues including interviews with Ved Mehta and Meena Alexander, articles in Amerasia, Journal of Asian American Studies, Hitting Critical Mass, and several essay collections and biographical encyclopedias. She teaches courses in Asian American women writers, filmmakers, and critics, Indian diasporic literature, modern British literature, reading and writing lyric poetry, and feminist literary criticism, among others. She has chaired several MLA committees and has served as the President of the South Asian Literary Association.

Floyd Cheung is Associate Professor of English and of American Studies at Smith College. He is also a member of the Five College Asian/Pacific/American Studies Certificate Program, for which he served as the founding chair. Interested in the recovery of early Asian American texts, he has edited H. T. Tsiang's novels And China Has Hands (Ironweed Press, 2003) and The Hanging on Union Square (Kaya Press, 2012) and co-edited Kathleen Tamagawa's memoir, Holy Prayers in a Horse's Ear (Rutgers University Press, 2008). He is the contributing co-editor of Recovered Legacies: Authority and Identity in Early Asian American Literature (Temple University Press, 2005). His essays on Asian American literature have appeared in various edited collections as well as journals including a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, New Centennial Review, TDR, and Studies in Travel Writing.

Contributors:
Karen M. Cardozo, Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt, Ambreen Hai, Bakirathi Mani, Susan Muchshima Moynihan, Rani Neutill, Rajini Srikanth