Jhumpa Lahiri’s latest book, In Other Words, is an autobiographical text that
highlights the author’s journey to a new land and language. She grows up in
America, communicates in Bengali with her parents during her early childhood
and uses English in school; a sense of ambivalence about language dawns in
her at this time. Her parents insist that Bengali be a dominant language in her
life, but she falls in love with English, which later becomes her own language
and the medium of her literary writing. During her doctoral studies, she feels
an impulse to learn Italian and desperately strives to speak and write in that
language. In Other Words, originally written in Italian, is the ultimate outcome
of her aspirations to learn Italian. As the author switches from one language
to another, from Bengali to English, and then from English to Italian, she
forms an ambivalent sense of separation and proximity. This article seeks to
explore Lahiri’s love for language, her sense of alienation and belonging, loss
and achievement, and her search for identity and metamorphosis.
