Literature Review - 第三空間的交涉:鍾芭•拉希莉《醫生的口譯員》中的悅納異己

I will first present the steps of my research to manifest how I narrow down the topics. I divide my literature review into six sections: Lahiri and her writing devices in Interpreter of Maladies, cultural authenticity, the meaning of place, the forming of cultural identity, the relation between cultural identity and the place of American home for immigrants, and the meanings of home to female Indian Americans. Both cultural authenticity and the meanings of place are socially and culturally constructed ideologies. I will first focus on Jhumpa Lahiri‘s hybrid identity, her writing devices and the motifs of Interpreter of Maladies.

Born to Bengali immigrants in London in 1967, Jhumpa Lahiri immigrated with parents to Rhode Island, New England when she was three years old. As a

second-generation of Indian origin and American upbringing, she negotiates her hybrid identity which results to her rootlessness. She accentuates such an in-between

plight in an interview: ―Like many immigrant offspring, I felt intense pressure to be two things, loyal to the old world and fluent in the new, approved of on either side of the hyphen‖ (Lahiri, ―My Two Lives‖). Rather than facing adaptation problems in the host country like first-generation immigrants, second-generation immigrants struggle between two cultures. Lahiri also points out that immigrants‘ descendants ―must navigate both the traditional values of their immigrant parent and the mainstream American values of their peers.‖ (Chotiner, ―Interviews: Jhumpa Lahiri‖). With Indian parents, Lahiri still preserves certain Indian ways of living and even visits her native country on a regular basis. However, growing up in the States, she assimilates herself into American culture. Her dual identity then causes her feeling of exile between the two worlds as she constantly shuttles between Indian culture and American culture.

Joshi indicates that ―Expatriation is the recognition of hyphenated, fluid identity, an acknowledgment of alternate realities‖ (118). Therefore, Lahiri‘s hybrid identity exactly manifests the fluidity of cultural identity. Identity does not remain static. In fact, cultural identity remains an evolving and ever-changing process that recreates and reinvents itself throughout expatriation. Such a notion of dynamic identity

influences and infiltrates her literary styles and her presentation of the story characters and their negotiations.

As an Asian American diasporic writer, Lahiri interweaves actual immigrant experiences with fictional elements into her writings. In response to her

semi-autobiographical writing style, Banerji indicates that ―Lahiri‘s stories often transcend and blur the boundaries between fiction and documentation with unusual flair‖ (―Interpreter of Maladies: A Collection of Short Stories‖ 37). Lahiri herself also

―openly admits that Interpreter of Maladies is a reflection of her own experiences as well as those of her parents and their Indian immigrant friends‖ (Farnsworth). Even though the short story collection entails nine seemingly different short stories with

irrelevant storylines, they resonate the themes of alienation, the cultural disjunction, and the problem of immigrants‘ identity.

Although her Indian American background inspires her writings, she does not merely delineate second-generation Indian Americans who live in the States just like herself. With regard to the portrayal of transcultural human encounters, she attempts to transcend the limitation of two-dimensional book pages and provide the reader with multi-faceted possibilities and reading experiences. Accordingly, her devices of a detached third-person narrative and parallaxical differences permeate the short story collection. In some of the stories such as ―Mrs. Sen‘s‖ and ―Interpreter of Maladies,‖

a third-person narrator recounts the progression of the story and the interchange between the characters. This employment of a third-person narrative operates as a distancing device. The result of such ―disidentification,‖ as Banergi comments, ―is that the possibility of the reader‘s identification and allegiance with a particular figure may be ambiguously suspended‖ (37). In this sense, as a writer, Lahiri does not intrude the book pages and interfere the reader with a dictating perspective. Hence, the stories unfold themselves with a detached and unbiased tone so that the reader does not lever towards any protagonist in particular. Joshi also points out that ―Lahiri is never an intrusive narrator who plays with emotional debris. What she prefers instead is to play a dispassionate narrator who lets life flow quietly through the winding corridors of suburbia‖ (111). Elements of morals and the

protagonist-antagonist binary system hardly exist in Lahiri‘s stories. Rather, Lahiri accentuates the illustrations of the main characters‘ psychological hardship and complexity. ―Neither does she envy about great American dream nor does she regret about not being a rightful legatee of ancient-thus-varied and rich Indian cultural heritage. With this state of mind she writes without being committed to any opinion‖

(Joshi 109).

Aside from the detached third-person point of view, Lahiri offers parallaxical differences in these stories. ―Mrs. Sen‘s‖ focuses on the encounter between an

American boy and the title character and delves into the agonized first-generation title character’s home sickness and adaptation problem in the U.S.. ―When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine‖ delineates an Indian American family‘s hospitality to a Pakistani botanist who visits America. Moreover, the story investigates the 10-year-old

second-generation‘s mentality and her complexity of identity. Beside setting stories in the States, Lahiri also shifts scenarios to India and poignantly depicts the cultural disjunction between an Indian local and the second-generation Indian American family who visit India as tourists in ―Interpreter of Maladies.‖ With respect to such parallaxical differences, Lahiri‘s artistic intention is more specifically associated with her desire to move beyond the stereotypical image of Indianness and, through her writing, to find an identity and discover a voice able to help her overcome the stigma of marginality (Hoffman 268). In other words, when it comes to ethnic minority literature or literature of diaspora, writers tend to define characters with certain preconceived images. These arbitrary definitions impose filter lenses on the reader and hinder their ability to grasp the flowing nature of culture and human identity.

Dobrinescu expands on Lahiri‘s avoidance of the stereotypical descriptions of the protagonists:

What Lahiri tries to avoid is the exoticism associated in the mind of the Westerners with either the locale or the people. She rather investigates and draws attention to problems of more general human interest that have nothing to do with India or being Indian either in

India or America. (―Travelling across Cultures—Jhumpa Lahiri‘s Interpreter Of Maladies‖ 107)

Dobrinescus‘s comment leads back to the title of the collection Interpreter of

Maladies. Not only does racial differences cause communicative barriers, varied

upbringings and cultural differences contribute to miscommunications between human beings as well. In a more fundamental level, Lahiri intends to transcends the category of diaspora literature and interpret the commonality of human malady—the interpersonal and intercultural miscommunication.

In a more fundamental way, as Dobrinescu suggests, not only do Lahiri‘s stories

―investigate the troubled position of the displaced individual caught between two cultures. . .‖ but also explore human encounters that ―across visible and invisible frontiers‖ (―Travelling across Cultures—Jhumpa Lahiri‘s Interpreter of Maladies,‖

101). Echoing with Dobrinescu, Jackson also states that Lahiri‘s vision of writing

―implies an ethical imperative for individuals to think beyond the boundaries of self, community, and nation in their interactions with others‖ (124). These two critics‘

comments respond with the underlying meaning of the title of the short story

collection: Interpreter of Maladies. Not only does this name refer to the title story, it signifies Lahiri‘s intention to serve as an interpreter of maladies.

Such maladies among people do not relate to physical illnesses, but connote the forever psychological alienation and miscommunications between people as a result of cultural disjunctions. As Stefanovici indicates: ―The title of the short story

‗Interpreter of Maladies‘ reflects this theme of the need of cultural interpretation‖

(108). Joshi further comments that ―Lahiri . . . is concerned with immigrant‘s sociological, psychological and spiritual maladies, and tries to be an interpreter. In that sense she is a true ‗interpreter of maladies . . . .‖ (119). She serves as an interpreter who creates a third space to facilitate trans-cultural interchanges from a cosmopolitan perspective.

Since Lahiri‘s literary works concern the portrayal of Indian diaspora, the issue of the representation of culture and cultural authenticity surface as critics and the

reader contemplate whether Lahiri as a writer is capable of the deliverance of cultural authenticity. In her book review on Jhumpa Lahiri‘s Interpreter of Maladies, Sunanda Mongia deconstructs the idea of the so-called ―authentic‖ culture by arguing that the attempt to define culture is to deny the fluidity and possibility within the culture itself.

It would be biased for either readers or scholars to argue that Lahiri‘s ―version of India‖ (207) is not the so-called ―true‖ Indian culture, for personal experience is subjective in its nature, especially for an expatriate who is somewhat affected by stereotypes ―which become short-cut to experience and thought‖ (209). Thus, these fluidity and diversity constitute Indians as a whole. As Mongia points out, culture is like ―a jigsaw puzzle‖ and only by combining these pieces and fragments together could the silhouette of India loom into vision. In my viewpoint, whether it is appropriate or not to refer to culture as ―a jigsaw puzzle‖ as Mongia maintains is debatable. After all, the term ―jigsaw puzzle‖ suggests the preexisting of a centerpiece so that the pieces could be organized into the rightful place and fit into the framework.

Both the word ―authentic‖ and ―jigsaw puzzle‖ still suggest preconceived images and stereotypes. As a result, the notion of the so-called cultural authenticity hardly exists.

Each individual experiences their own unique cultural experience of various forms.

Since culture remains dynamic and ever-changing, there is no way for any form of representation because of its impossibility of representation.

Moreover, such an issue of the representation of culture leads to the question of cultural translation. Lahiri‘s position deserves careful consideration as she is Indian by birth and English by language. She chooses to use English instead of Indian language to write down stories of cultural clashes between Indian immigrants and Americans.

Her status and viewpoint may indicate her ambiguous in-between cultural identity.

While local Indians finds insufficiency in her depiction of India, mainstream

American society acclaims the work greatly. This contrast shows the impossibility of

the representation of culture and the necessity of the illusion of culture in the field of diasporic literature. Lahiri and the local Indians will always perceive Indian culture differently because of their variations in terms of upbringings. India burdens religious, political, and cultural complexities which destine itself to bear ambiguity and

indescribability. Even local Indians will never reconcile with one another with regard to their parallaxical perceptions on India in various Indian regions. However,

Interpreter of Maladies receives critical praises and major book awards in America

because other than Indian, American readers or readers from other countries of the world require a platform to offer them the necessary cultural illusion. Jhumpa Lahiri represents the platform with her language and multi-layered identities. As a

second-generation Indian immigrants, she uses English, a widely spoken language, to deliver her version of India to the world. This enables people of different cultural / national backgrounds to construct the Indian culture of their minds even though this illusion only provides them merely a small glimpse of the complicated nation.

Noelle Brada-Williams in ―Reading Jhumpa Lahiri‘s Interpreter of Maladies as a Short Story Cycle‖ further comments on such parallaxical differences of Lahiri with regard to her descriptions of India. Brada-Williams claims that it would be more appropriate to refer to Interpreter of Maladies as a short story cycle. In the short story collection, the main concerns are family relation, cross cultural encounters, sense of alienation, and communication difficulties. Throughout her writings, these seemingly self-sufficient and independent nine short stories echo with one another from different narratives and perspectives.

By indicating such parallaxical differences provided to the reader in Lahiri‘s writings, Brada-Williams suggests that she may solve the controversy of the

representation of the so-called ―authentic‖ Indian culture, especially in terms of ethnic American literature. From her perspective, Lahiri, as a second-generation Indian

diasporic writer, may be aware of the limitations of the representation. Thus, she attempts to expand the scope of ethnic literature by shifting narratives and changing characters positions. These parallaxical differences enable the observer and the

observed to look at India via different angles so as to integrate pieces of India together.

Furthermore, although Brada-Williams points out that the recurring themes in the collection are trans-national collisions, human communications, sense of displacement, the Self-Other discourse that unifies these topics has not yet been explored sufficiently.

Since Lahiri‘s short stories emphasize immigrants‘ relocation experiences in the host country and their clashes with host culture and Americans while endeavoring to adapt themselves to the host country, the Self-Other negotiation could be brought into the discussion. What is more, many short stories take place in the sphere of home in which domestic daily lives and the interactions between the Indian family members and guests are portrayed in detail. As a result, I believe it is fundamental to study the meanings of home to Indian immigrants and the underlying significance of the relation between the host of the home and the guests of various ethnic backgrounds who visit the home. These interconnected elements resonate with the title of the collection Interpreter of Maladies in which trans-cultural collisions, human communications, and Self-Other negotiations serve as central concern in many of Lahiri‘s works.

Just like the notion of cultural authenticity, the meaning of place is a social construct. Tim Cresswell‘s In Place / Out of Place: Geography, Ideology and Transgression highlights the correlation between place and behavior. When people

conceive of the idea of place, they regulate what people should / should not do in certain places according to social standards. Hence, values and meanings of space or place are social ideologies that regulate people‘s appropriate behaviors and echo with Cresswell‘s notion of ―normative geography.‖ In the book, the first subject matter that

he deals with is the so-called ―normative geography.‖ Such an ideology defines the so-called proper or an improper behavior in a place by the social standards. He illustrates how these values and meanings of space or place are produced as social constructs. The second main point that he addresses is transgression. By challenging social norms or appropriate actions in a space or place, Creswell depicts how

otherness is constructed through people‘s ideology toward place. From my

perspective, Cresswell‘s perception of place not only applies to sociology, but also elucidates itself in the field of literature writing. For literature writers, or diasporic writers like Jhumpa Lahiri whose in-betweeness involves life experiences in India and America, a place bears underlying meanings rather than mechanical settings randomly chosen for stories to take place. Places or the depictions of places may serve as

symbols to mirror the inner feelings of the characters, the motifs of the story, or even identification complex of immigrants.

In his Diasporas in the Contemporary World, Milton J. Esman defines the term diaspora as ―a migrant community that maintains material or sentimental linkages with its home country, while adapting to the environment and institutions of its host country‖ (14). Stuart Hall, however, describes diaspora as more than the physical transnational relocation of a group of people from their homeland to the host country, but emphasizes the process of ―differentiation‖ (2) in the host country. Hall attempts to underline the ambiguous psychology of the migrants who attempt to culturally and socially conform to the mainstream society, but in the meantime feel a sense of alienation in the adopted country that ―shape[s]‖ their cultural identity ―through the processes of exclusion‖ (2). In other words, immigrants do not preconceive how an ethnic group should behave when they first arrived in the host country. Thus, the forming of ethnic or cultural identity is a continuous process reshaped and recreated during their negotiations with the mainstream adopted culture. Such mentality is

illustrated in the first-generation immigrants in Lahiri‘s stories and further influences the second-generation immigrants.

As Ken Park describes in Americas from India and Other South Asian Countries, the immigrant experience for the first- generation immigrants and their children could be quite different. While first-generation immigrants face racism and adaptation difficulty in the host country, problems for their descent could be more complicated.

Different from first-generation immigrants who identify with Indian culture, the second-generation Indian Americans also have to struggle between the

family-oriented Indian heritage and individual-oriented American culture. For Lahiri, growing up in America means assimilation into American culture. Nevertheless, she does not disconnect with India totally, for she is still required by her parents to conform to certain Indian traditions. Her mentality as an in-betweenness illustrates in her description of her root and ethnicity: ―No country is my motherland‖ (Jawaid).

Both Ernst van Alphen and Sharmila Rudrappa further expand on the idea of cultural authenticity with the domain of American home. However, before going into the exploration of the interrelated negotiations between ethnicity and the place of home, I want to probe into the concept of ―place‖. People hardly consider the interlocking relation between place and individual behavior or the psychological impact that place may have on people.

Additionally, Ernst van Alphen and Sharmila Rudrappa comments on Creswell‘s notion that places deliver social meanings by indicating the interrelation between cultural ethnicity and the domain of home. They argue that ethnic identity and

―authentic‖ Indian-ness is not transplanted from India, but the constant negotiations and reshaping process of imagining homeland via collected memory in an attempt to recreate Indian-ness in American home (Rudrappa 95). In this aspect, their marginal place and need to conform to white norms in American society prompt them to

replicate pure Indian-ness and homeland culture in the domain of home as a way of resistance to American society which excludes immigrants as the Other. They conclude that, however, cultural experiences could not be reproduced. Indian immigrants‘ conception of India is based on the past memory of the subcontinent or narrations from the previous experiences of the first-generation immigrants so as to establish ethnic bonds with the reinvented, imaginary homeland.

Both Alphen and Rudrappa suggest the negotiations and interlocking relation between the forming of immigrants‘ ethnic identity and American home. I further seek to combine the idea of the intertwined relation between home and identity formation into the discussion of my thesis. Since the main protagonists of the three short stories that I intend to analyze are female Indian Americans or the daughters of Indian

在文檔中第三空間的交涉:鍾芭•拉希莉《醫生的口譯員》中的悅納異己 (頁 11-23)