Rejecting the (Step)Mother Tongue: Jhumpa Lahiri’s Translingual Identity

Unlike many writers who adopt the language of the country to which they emigrate or with which they have ties dictated by colonialism, politics, or economics, the choice of Jhumpa Lahiri—the Pulitzer-prize-winning North American writer of Bengali heritage—to express herself creatively in Italian is apparently unmotivated. In altre parole (2015, trans. In Other Words) narrates her relationship with Italian, from language lessons in America to her journeys to Italy and her ultimate decision to “abandon” English and write in this new language that somehow liberates her. This chapter examines Lahiri’s work at the intersection between language, culture, and translation raising questions of personal identity and translingualism. The focus will be on tracing Lahiri’s representations of cultural hybridity throughout her work, in subsequent translations, and in the various paratextual elements surrounding the texts.