Talk:Interpreter of Maladies

Why just one story?

A Temporary Matter is my favorite story from the book - but why does is this the only described story? I have edited some of the story for inconsistencies and I took out the last line because it was an opinion.

But the whole "summary" of "A Temporary Matter" is an opinion. Its not a summary at all.

Maybe we can expand this with summaries of all the stories.NYKenny 03:06, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

This summary was added just today by someone whose grasp of the English language is somewhat limited. Thanks for copyediting, but it still needs way too much work. Despite this, however, I think it would be much better to add smaller, more concise summaries of each short story rather than long, tedious descriptions of every minute detail in every single story. That way the article will not become too long, and yet justice will be done to this wonderful book and all of the parts that make up for it. Opinions? María: (habla ~ cosas) 03:32, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Do you think we should just cut the Temporary Matter story out until someone can come and describe each story? I would love to but it's been so long since I read the book that I am not the best authority to do so...NYKenny 03:04, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I think that would be the best move. It's also been a while since I've read the book, but I think I can dig out my copy, and maybe even do some Google searching to see what short, significant summaries I can come up with. Please feel free to jump in and help if you feel you can, NYKenny, or anyone for that matter. :) María: (habla ~ cosas) 02:34, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

I cleaned up the page - and I will try to get some summaries soon!!NYKenny 05:01, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I will work on expanding on the story summaries. For such a noteworthy collection of stories, the page is criminally underdeveloped. In the meantime, I added some more literary criticism to the critical reception part of the page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Realnow (talk • contribs) 00:05, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Photo

The photo on the main page says that it is the cover of the first edition. This is not correct - the cover of the first edition would not have any mention of the Pulitzer Prize win. I have changed this. NYKenny 21:34, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Major revision

The format of the page has been unencyclopedic, so I shortened and rearranged it significantly, while copying the full text from before my revision below. The majority of the page consisted of detailed paraphrases from individual articles (named but not cited) by literature scholars about The Interpreter of Maladies, the longest of which contained summaries of several stories. I moved those summaries to the previous section, adding them to the single story-summary already there. Then I condensed the various lengthy paraphrases of critics' articles into a single section called "Criticism." 71.174.193.81 (talk) 15:35, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Full text of what I edited and condensed. 71.174.193.81 (talk) 15:35, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Roles of Space in "The Third and Final Continent ("American Spaces in the Fiction of Jhumpa Lahiri" by Judith Caesar)

Mrs. Croft repeatedly mentions locking the doors. It is the first thing that she says to the narrator, and she asks him if he has locked up every time that he enters. Caesar says that “she looks out a world that she no longer understands” (53). She never leaves the house and is shocked by current society and its lack of manners. She controls her borders and thereby controls her contact with the outside world. This separation from the outside world through barriers helps a connection grow between the narrator and Mrs. Croft, because he realizes they are both “equally distant from the societies in which they grew up, he from modern-day India, she from nineteenth century America” (54). Further, Mrs. Croft and the narrator are separated by physical barriers, i.e. the stairs because she cannot climb them. The narrator’s private space lets him make an imaginative connection with America. In his room upstairs he is truly alone, but he can travel downstairs, through Mrs. Croft to connect with America. Caesar also posits that the narrator also lives behind locked doors with which he is running from his past. Things in the new world still remind him of his past, but his private space allows him to barricade himself from them. He mentions several times being able to hear his mother through the wall even on a different continent, but the door allows him to block it out. Furthermore, when the narrator moves out of Mrs. Croft’s to live with his wife, he feels completely like a stranger around his wife until he brings her to the space in Mrs. Croft’s home. Caesar says that the narrator had to “see her against the backdrop of his imagined American Space” (56)

Short Story Cycle, Review By Noelle Brada-Williams

The literature critique by Professor Noelle Brada-Williams argues that the Interpreter of Maladies is not just a collection of random short stories that have common components but that the stories are combined to create a “short story cycle.” She argues that Lahiri intentionally connects the themes and motifs throughout them to produce a cumulative effect on the reader. She goes on to argue that Indian American literature is under-represented and Lahiri deliberately tries to give a diverse view of Indian Americans so as not to brand the group as a whole. Many of the stories are balanced by other stories that contradict the character of people and the theme of each. She brings up the common theme of displacement and alienation in each respective story. She argues, “this sense of belonging to a particular place and culture and yet at the same time being an outsider to another creates a tension in individuals which happens to be a distinguishing feature of Lahiri’s characters.” Brada- Williams further explains how Interpreter of Maladies is considered a story cycle rather than a compilation of short stories when she suggests, “to distinguish between a collection containing stories merely characteristic of a writer’s dominant interests and a true short story cycle, a single theme tying every story together is needed.” She goes on to assert that the one true common theme is the “frequent representations of extreme care and neglect.” She claims that every relationship in the compilation of stories is based on this including communities, parent-child, and marital affairs. Professor Brada- Williams concludes her argument stating that Lahiri provides with the ability to create our own closure, but our responsibility as readers is to carefully read and understand the common themes to give her seemingly independent stories more depth and meaning.

"The Aesthetics of Dislocation" by Ketu H. Katrak

Ketu H. Katrak deals with the phenomenon of diaspora and the creation of diasporic identities and communities based on race, ethnicity, nation, gender, class, religion, and language. To look at the creation of these identities as a trend connected with immigration, Katrak cites the work of several minority writers, focusing primarily upon Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies. Katrak explains the difference between immigrating with the intention of maintaining identity versus with the intention of assimilation, the almost inevitable trauma of self-transformation experienced though the immigration process. Immigration results in a series of broken identities that form "multiple anchorages"--the ties to multiple cultures that immigrants obtain through assimilation. Specific to Lahiri's work, Katrak explains the term "ethno-global." This explains and identity that transcends narrow nationalism while still celebrating ethnic heritage and universal humanism. Katrak uses the story of the Das family to discuss the notion of flexible citizenship, the classification as Non-Resident Indians to maintain close emotional ties to the mother culture. However, Katrak also observes a certain global entitlement in the Das family, common for many Asian Americans or even other US immigrants, where living in the US provides the right to pick and choose from different cultures. The Das family tells a story of crossing national boundaries and the difference between ethnic national (in Mr. Kapasi)identification and a return to nativism (in Mrs. Das). The relationship between Mr. Kapasi and Mrs. Das reminds characters that, despite how closely two people relate over ethnicity, a divide exists in other ways, particularly in terms of class privilege. Lahiri's characters represent the diversity of the Asian American community, abandoning any notion of one specific Indian culture. Katrak also analyzes the "When Mr. Pirzada Comes to Dine" story. She focuses on Lilian's struggle to mesh the foreign history--her ethnic history--that she learns from interactions with Mr. Pirzada and from books in the library with the American world all around her. Lilian learns the importance of "carrying our histories within us since they are not visible in the world around us." Lahiri's stories show the diasporic struggle to keep hold of culture as characters create new lives in foreign cultures. Relationships, language, rituals, and religion all help these characters maintain their culture in new surroundings even as they build a "hybrid realization" as Asian Americans.

"Foodways and Subjectivity in Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies" by Laura Anh Williams

Laura Anh Williams observes the stories within the novel as highlighting the frequently omitted female diasporic subject. She specifically analyzes "A Temporary Matter," "Mrs. Sen's," and "This Blessed House." She notes how the things characters eat and the ways they eat them, as well as how characters relate to the preparation of food, speaks to conditions of migration and diaspora. The women in these stories all utilize foodways to construct their own unique racialized subjectivity and to engender agency.

"A Temporary Matter"

Both characters knowledge of and relation to food shows that Shoba, the wife, does have knowledge and agency outside of her husband's imagining. Shukumar's exhaustion of Shoba's well-stocked pantry, without replenishing it, signifies the way he has exhausted and emptied his wife and the way he has assumed their marital problems were temporary without investing any care in restoring or replenishing their relationship. This agency allows her to move past their tragedy to a new life that does not contain Shukumar's nutritionally and psychically consumptive and exhaustive presence and practices.

"Mrs. Sen's"

Like "A Temporary Matter," this story is filled with lists of produce, catalogs of ingredients, and descriptions of recipes. Emphasis is placed on ingredients and the act of preparation. The caretaker, Mrs. Sen, solitary chops and prepares food as she tells Elliot stories of her past life, helping to craft her identity. The chopping and story telling is well within her knowledge and expertise and is linked not only to Mrs. Sen's subjectivity, but also her ethnic identity and her ability to forge a connection with others. When she can no longer care for Elliot, Mrs. Sen returns to a world where she negotiates the pangs of loneliness and alienation that she feels as a woman located far away from her family with no real community to speak of besides her husband in the United States. The story of Mrs. Sen displays the forgotten female diasporic subject.

"This Blessed House"

Twinkle’s lack of traditional cultural knowledge and consequent willingness to improvise with ingredients engenders transformation and constructive relationships. Her relationship to food, objects, and culture that is flexible and constructive displays a confidence and a sense of self-possession as well as a form of knowledge that her husband cannot access or comprehend. That relationship may just contain the transformative potential for their marriage.

Food Functioning Autobiographically

Williams notes the ability of food in literature to function autobiographically, and in fact, Interpreter of Maladies indeed reflects Lahiri’s own family experiences. In an interview, Lahiri recalls that for her mother, cooking "was her jurisdiction. It was also her secret." For individuals such as Lahiri's' mother, cooking constructs a sense of identity, interrelationship, and home that is simultaneously communal and yet also highly personal.

I appreciate that you made the effort to condense what was there, but really everything should have been completely deleted. This article reads like a shortened English 100 paper (one that would not get an A, by the way), nothing close to an encyclopedia. The article needs to be changed from an interpretation of themes to basic summaries. 49giantsharks (talk) 04:23, 13 September 2009 (UTC)