THIS BLESSED HOUSE

The final story summary from Interpreter of Maladies:

Summary: This Blessed House

            “Jhumpa Lahiri  provides a short story, “This Blessed House” in Interpreter of Maladies showing contrast and similarity between the two main characters. Sanjeev born and raised in Calcutta, educated in the United States, attended MIT, and an engineering professional is newly married to California born and raised Twinkle who is very much a young vibrant modern American woman who is also highly educated working on her masters at Standford. The similarities between them physically are their ethnicity, but visibly to anyone else they could not be any more different.

            They find various Christian themed paraphernalia throughout the home they just moved into in an established neighborhood located in Hartford right soon after they married. The former occupants must have been devout Christians as Twinkle’s excitement grows with each find and overtly desires to display them out in the open. Although they are of Indian ethnicity, and they are not practicing Hindus, Sanjeev is displeased and quite uncomfortable. The difference of their background is evident in the ability of Sanjeev to understand and accept Twinkles behavior and of Twinkles disregard for Sanjeev’s reasoning for the dislike of religious relics discovered.

            Sanjeev is obviously in love with Twinkle, although their courtship was brief and not fully developed. The energy and eccentricities Twinkle exudes not only aggravates Sanjeev but he is also fascinated by them. He realizes a choice he has if he wants to continue to be married to a woman who does not hold the same old fashioned values he had once regarded a traditional wife should perform such as cooking and cleaning. As he rushed into the marriage without learning to live with Twinkles quirks, purchased the home without noticing the eccentric details of Christianity throughout the home, Sanjeev must decide if he really loves her. He must decide if their differences will separate them or bring them together in this new life where they are joined and no longer one.

            The scene at their housewarming party shows Sanjeev just how much he belongs with Twinkle. Although he was worried about what his Indian colleagues would think with all the Christian relics in the home or would they are able to appreciate the extroverted way his wife is. After the validation from his friends about her beauty and how much fun they were having, it seems that is when he finally decided to quit the internal fight and give in. For giving in he would not be at a loss, yet gain the love of his life, regardless of their differences.

Female Subjects and Negotiating Identities-Analaysis

Analysis: Female Subjects and Negotiating Identities

            This essay from Bahareh Bahmanpour regarding Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies, focused on stories surrounding female characters as opposed to males. The stories contain suffering, adaptation, and negotiating their identities through “silence, resistance, negotiation, acculturation or assimilation.” (Bahmanpour, 44).  The strength women played in a cultural role was discussed in “This Blessed House”, The Treatment of Bibi Hledar”, “Mrs. Sen”, and “Sexy” provides interpretation focused on identity and provides a voice to these diasporic females in a post-colonial setting.

            Providing a background of identity, stating that they are “conceived as a process” (Bahmanpour, 45) rather than fixed as we know it, Bahmanpour provides the idea that identity is a process not just to be a representation of oneself. Since our identity can be an ongoing process, understanding boundaries could provide a focus for which Lahiri does in her works. Such as in the sixth story of “This Blessed House”. The character, Twinkle, a young wife who moved into a new house in America with her husband. She is considered a second generation Indian where she is ethnically Indian but culturally American. This story displays the hybridity where she lacks traditional Indian cultural knowledge, willingness to adapts all while display solid confidence for which her husband cannot comprehend providing fluidity traveling effortlessly from one culture to the other as see needs.

In “The Treatment of Nibi Haldar” the setting is in India with a theme of anxiety of the globalization of Indian women who is essentially homeless. Bibi is sick, received treatment without results, she longed for a normal life yet no one took her for their wife. She ends up living alone, happy, and gave birth to a son after she is mysteriously cured. Bibi negotiated between gender identity and ethnic codes established in her community she wanted to belong to, although she felt out of place. She became a mother without a wife, in this manner displayed the hybrid nature of identity.

“Mrs. Sen’s” is a story for which she is the caretaker , she expounds on her past, each detail creating her identity to Eliot, an eleven-year-old boy. As a self-described first generation immigrant, she found it difficult to adapt to her new surroundings as she could not remove her own cultural background and values. She takes a massive step to drive, thus proving her independence and to soothe loneliness and alienation she felt being far from her family.  She faced her fears in order to show to release past trauma is to gradually release her fears.

            Lastly, in “Sexy”, Miranda is an American young woman from Boston in an affair with a married Indian man. She is thrilled with the fascination with Indian culture and tried to learn more about it. The man she has an affair with is not as invested in sharing his cultural identity beyond their conquest; therefore her search for the cultural other isn’t complete.

            In closing, the female characters in Lahiri’s works provide their own voice in order to display their identity in each quest to develop them.

When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine

Summary: When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine

            “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine” is a short story from Interpreter of Maladies from Jhumpa Lahiri. In this story, Mr. Pirzada is from Dacca, Bangladesh (once part of Pakistan), where the Pakistani army invaded and caused over three hundred thousand people died. He had been a botany professional at the university sent to America to study foliage of New England from the government of Pakistan. Back home he left a wife, seven daughters whom lived in a three-story home and a war was starting. The story is essentially about identity between the main characters, a young girl named Lilia and how she relates to Mr. Pirzada.

            Lilia, an Indian-American girl who is ten years old, living in Massachusetts in 1971. Her family is Hindu and Indian-Bengali. They befriend Mr. Pirzada who is Muslim and Pakistani-Bengali, visiting from East Pakistan and regularly invited him to their home for dinner. Lilia identifies with the Indian ethnicity for the similarities in the physical attributes between her, her family, and family friends considered Indian. Lilia also identities with being American, learning of the history, reading literature, and living life as a typical ten year old American girl (during Halloween).

            Mr. Pirzada becomes the ‘other’ during the course of his numerous visits to Lilia’s home. She analyzes the distinctions between him and her parents even though there are quite a few similarities. Her father informs her Mr. Pirzada is no longer Indian, showing her the geography on a map of the world taped over his desk to indicate the severed country and physical boundary line which separates her ‘people’ and his. It became evident to Lilia that Mr. Pirzada also realized his cultural identification when he struggled to understand an American saying and gesture ‘thank you’ after Lilia commented after receiving candy from him. She taught him about carving a pumpkin and the holiday of Halloween, all while he was worried about his family back home. The fact he is constantly around her family during dinner is symbolic to his connection with his home. It wasn’t until Mr. Pirzada went back to Dacca when Lilia realized although she could not recall the first or last time she had seen him, she missed him. She had kept a box filled with the candy he would bring to her. She would usually have one piece thinking of him, after receiving a card from him stating he was well with his family, she no longer had to worry and threw out the remaining candy.

Oral Narrative as Short Story Cycle-Rocio G. Davis

Davis: Forging Community in Edwidge Danticat’s Krik?Krak!       

            Rocio G. Davis completely dissects the way Edwidge Danticat provides short stories in order to promote collective identity in this essay. First he points out the cultural interpretation regarding a variety of short stories by ethnic writers. The dynamic of providing history as a road the essence of gynocentric relationship between mother and daughter as the vehicle for which it travels is enlightening.

            In the form of storytelling, collective short stories in ethnic novels from writers such as Danticat, promotes survival especially in women. The cultural history behind each writer can be felt as the reader is engulfed in a rich story about hardships and happiness that promotes self-affirmation for the ‘daughters’ of the stories and individual empowerment for the ‘mothers’. Danticat turns to her own roots, for example, from her own experiences with family, community, and the struggles to identify with her ethnicity in the intertwined Haitian culture and connecting her life in the United States.

            Rocio points out that the validity of the past, examination of similar paths and recognition from fellow women is the utmost importance in the reason why ‘games’ are played among women in Danticat’s stories. The hidden meanings and ability to have a voice becomes evident in the symbolism used through stories mainly about leaving Haiti and the search for a future outside of the ‘home’ each character recognizes with.

            The “desire to come to terms with a past that is both personal and collective: this type of fiction often explores the ethnic character and history of a community as a reflection of a personal odyssey of displacement, and search for self and community.” Danticat showed the struggle of women to preserve the bonds of their Haitian community, and through the life in the United States while maintaining the link to the mother country. The need to find familial and historical connections with the group that is identified with becomes relevant among Danticat’s characters. Danticat blends this idea with the solid structure with history, although her works are fiction, in order to preserve the familiar bonds between women essential for their survival.

Pulitano and Caribbean Studies Journal

Elvira Pulitano: Landscape, Memory and Survival in the Fiction of Edwidge Danticat      

            Elvira Pulitano brought to light the ideology behind the meaning of landscape as it relates to the memory and perhaps underlying meaning in the fictional writing by author, Edwidge Danticat. Pulitano had an idea to submit a paper for a panel featuring island and ocean representation during a convention in Philadelphia in 2006. Her idea contained the works by Danticat and her descriptive narratives covering discourse of islands and the ocean mainly Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Although Pulitano was turned down on account that Danticat wrote in English and the Francophone writing is done in French. Pulitano asserts her idea that even though Danticat used English for her works, the underlying language of the landscape described and her use of native words familiar to those from the Caribbean was ultimately the true culture representative of the islands and ocean.

            Simple representation of  various languages used to instill richness of culture in Haiti and the Dominican Republic could be found from different cultures which invaded and wreaked havoc over the borders. The Spanish word for parsley is quite symbolic among the Haitian sugar cane cutters, although they pronounced the word differently. There are references of their language also from the French, English and Africa to describe life and landscape in the works by Danticat containing the history of slaves taken from Africa travelled the Atlantic to the Caribbean by European settlers.

            The history of Hispaniola reclaimed by Danticat provided voices to the victims of the 1937 massacre. This event is not only captured in Danticat’s Farming of Bones, she also provides truth behind the underlying narrative story of fiction, depicting the pain and joy experienced by memory of actual people of that era and location permanently engrained in the landscape and waters.

            The river is quite symbolic representing both life and death in Danticat’s Krik?Krak!. In both Haitian folklore and accounts represented in such stories as Nineteen Thirty-Seven and Children of the Sea, water represents both the idea of re-birth and freedom of death. Many parts of the landscape could be dissected in order to provide the collective cultures that blend and make up the landscape for which the discourse of the Caribbean exists.

            Lastly, Pulitano points out that, “According to an ancient Haitian belief, a transnational historical community is powerfully established in the fluid, borderless space of the sea.” (Pulitano, 12) The underlying message behind the works of Danticat is that in order to create a nationalist discourse of island identity, one must recognize the past and provide a voice to those that were not able to provide.