The character arc of Jhumpa Lahiri
A life drawn by Character Arc from the public record
Born on 11 July 1967 in London to Bengali immigrants from West Bengal, and raised in Rhode Island from the age of three. Between then and now sit a name shortened by a kindergarten teacher, stolen school notebooks filled with stories, a book written at nine from the point of view of a bathroom scale, a degree at Barnard, four advanced degrees at Boston University, a doctorate in Renaissance studies finished in 1997, years of rejection, a Pulitzer Prize for her first collection, a move to Rome in 2012, and a body of work written in Italian. The line below draws the story so far, in order.
Drag along the line to move, pinch or use the buttons to look closer. Tap the line to pluck it, or any mark for its card. Drawn from the public record of her life; the sources are at the foot of the page.
Who is Jhumpa Lahiri?
A Pulitzer for the first book, and then she changed language.
She was born in London to Bengali parents and the family moved to Massachusetts when she was three, then to Rhode Island, where her father was a university librarian and her mother a schoolteacher who wanted her children to know where they came from. Until she was four she was strictly not allowed to speak anything but Bengali. She speaks and understands it fluently and cannot read it. When she started kindergarten her teachers used the name her family used at home, because it was easier to say than her given one.
She wrote as a child, stealing an extra notebook or two from the school cupboard, which she has called her first dishonest act, and she never showed the writing to adults. At nine she won a school contest with a book written from the point of view of a bathroom scale, and the prize was that it went into the school library. In her teens the writing shrank rather than grew. She decided in college that she would be an English professor, because being a writer seemed unavailable to an ordinary person.
She took a degree at Barnard in 1989 and then four advanced degrees at Boston University: two masters in literature, a master of fine arts, and a doctorate in Renaissance studies, finished in 1997 with a dissertation on Italian palaces on the Jacobean stage. That year, burned out on academia, she started wanting to write again, worked an unpaid internship producing flattering copy about consumer products, and typed stories at night and at weekends. Publishers had been rejecting her short stories for years.
One story was published in 1998 and chosen for a best of the year anthology. The collection came out in 1999 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, along with a major first book award. A novel followed in 2003 and was made into a film, a second collection in 2008, and a second novel in 2013 that was a finalist for both the Booker and the National Book Award.
In 2012 she moved with her husband and their two children from Brooklyn to Rome. She learned Italian, and in 2015 announced in an essay, itself translated out of the Italian she had written it in, that she was now writing only in that language. A book of essays in Italian came in 2015, a novel in 2018, an anthology of forty Italian writers she compiled and translated in 2019, her own novel translated back into English in 2021, and a collection of Roman stories in 2023. She has taught at Princeton and now directs creative writing at the college where she was an undergraduate.
The moments
Jhumpa Lahiri's timeline.
The 1970s
Only Bengali until four
Everyday. One language at home, and no other allowed in her mouth.
A teacher shortens her name
Setback. Her own name, filed down at the school gate to fit other people.
Stolen notebooks
Everyday, and it changed her direction. Extra notebooks, taken quietly, and filled where nobody would see.
A book about a scale
Milestone, and it changed everything. Nine years old, a book in the school library, and she wrote it from the scale's side.
The 1980s
The writing shrank
Setback, and it changed everything. The older she got, the less she let herself write.
Barnard, and a plan
Milestone, and it changed her direction. She picked the respectable version of the same love.
The 1990s
Four degrees and a doctorate
Milestone, and it changed her direction. Four graduate degrees, and a thesis about Italian palaces.
Stories typed at night
Milestone, and it changed everything. Burned out on the safe plan, writing again in the hours nobody wanted.
Rejected for years
Setback, and it changed everything. Years of the same envelope coming back.
Interpreter of Maladies
Milestone, and it changed everything. The rejected stories, bound together, and the best debut of the year.
The 2000s
The Pulitzer
Milestone, and it changed everything. The biggest prize in American letters, for a first book.
The Namesake
Milestone, and it changed her direction. The thing she was embarrassed about at five, made into a novel and then a film.
The 2010s
She moves to Rome
Milestone, and it changed everything. A family of four, moved to a country whose language she did not have.
Two shortlists at once
Milestone, and it changed her direction. Booker and National Book Award finalist with the same novel.
Keep writing in English
Crossroads, decided.
The paths laid out: write only in Italian, taken, or stay in English. Essays, a novel, an anthology of forty writers and a story collection have followed in Italian.
Only in Italian now
Milestone, and it changed everything. She put down the language she had won the Pulitzer in and used the new one.
Forty writers, translated
Milestone. Forty writers carried across, and then her own book carried back.
The 2020s
Back to Barnard
Milestone, and it changed her direction. Running the writing programme at the college she studied at.
Rome is where the sentences come from now, and the notebooks are still filling up. What it has set moving is the least likely lesson a prize can teach: she had already won everything her language had to give, and she put it down and learned another one, which is what people do who are not finished yet.
Your turn
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Hers had years of rejection before the prize and a blank page in a new language after it. Yours is already further along than you think, and drawing it takes about five minutes.
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Sources
- Jhumpa Lahiri, English Wikipedia biography, filed under living people.
- Pulitzer Prize records for 2000 and PEN Hemingway Award records for 1999.
- Booker Prize and National Book Award shortlists for 2013, and DSC Prize records for January 2015.
- Her own 2015 essay on learning Italian, as summarised there.