In 1967, Jhumpa Lahiri was born in London to Bengali parents. As a child, Lahiri moved with her family to Rhode Island where Jhumpa spent her adolescence. Lahiri went on to attend Barnard College, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in English and later attending Boston University. It was here Lahiri attained Master’s Degrees in English, Creative Writing, and Comparative Studies in Literature and the Arts as well as a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies.
Lahiri also worked for a short time teaching creative writing at Boston University and the Rhode Island School of Design.
Lahiri has travelled extensively to India and has experienced the effects of colonialism there as well as experienced the issues of the diaspora as it exists.
She feels strong ties to her parents’ homeland as well as the United States and England. Growing up with ties to all three countries created in Lahiri a sense of homelessness and an inability to feel accepted.
Lahiri, the daughter of a librarian and school teacher, has always been inclined to creative writing. At a press conference in Calcutta in January of 2001, Lahiri described this absence of belonging, “No country is my motherland. I always find myself in exile in whichever country I travel to, that’s why I was tempted to write something about those living their lives in exile”.
This idea of exile runs consistently throughout Lahiri’s Pulitzer Prize winning book Interpreter of Maladies.
Lahiri has won many awards for Interpreter of Maladies. These awards and honors include The Pulitzer Prize in 2000, The Transatlantic Review Award from the Henfield Foundation, The Louisiana Review Award for Short Fiction, the O. Henry Award for Best American Short Stories, the PEN/Hemingway Award, The New Yorker Debut of the Year Award and The American Academy of Arts and Letters Award.
