Interpreter of Maladies

Review

Lonely, lilting, and loving, Jhumpa Lahiri’s short story collection Interpreter of Maladies explores issues of Indian-American identity and family with rich prose and surrealistically realistic characters. While the stories remain firmly grounded in a recognizable reality, Lahiri’s stunningly beautiful word choice inundates them with a magical quality that rightfully earned her the Pulitzer Prize in 2000.

There is no direct narrative connect between them, nor do the characters phase between stories. Rather, they unite over common themes and motifs and a shared mood blending confusion and disconnect with even the most tenuous shred of hope. Food stands as one of Lahiri’s most common images, with individuals symbolically interacting with it as a means of underscoring their methods of communicating with one another. It’s quite a clever little device, one usually inserted with an aching obviousness in the works of lesser writers, but thankfully woven far more deftly into Interpreter of Maladies.

Lahiri not only probes the depths of her characters as they grapple with the expected issues associated with establishing firm footing in two vastly different worlds, but the pains and confusion associated with love and being loved as well. Whether platonic or not, she dissects how the emotion can simultaneously stimulate and isolate. While some element of this theme is present in every story, both “Sexy” and “The Blessed House” stood out to me as the most effective examples. They’re the most obvious, yes, but also – to me – some of the more fully realized treatises on love the collection has to offer in terms of palpable interpersonal conflict. The former reflects upon an emotionally one-sided affair between a married man and his ardent mistress, while the latter depicts a newly united couple coming to terms with their differing perspectives on religion and culture.

However, “The Third and Final Continent” stands as the greatest synthesis of Lahiri’s two favored themes. The concluding story in the collection, it spans most of one man’s lifetime as he transitions from orphaned youngster to single immigrant to family man to older gentleman. Laden with nearly every emotion on the spectrum presented in bittersweet detail, the narrator recounts the ebbs and flows of his life  in India, England, and America and the jarring adjustments – both personal and interpersonal – necessary for survival. He learns to embrace and care for a wife thrust upon him by extended family, and the both of them must learn to eke out a multicultural identity in Massachusettes while simultaneously forging a life with one another. It’s as haunting as it is lovely, and a perfect ending which leads comfortably straight back to the collection’s beginning.

Bibliographic Information

Lahiri, Jhumpa. Interpreter of Maladies. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999.

Further Reading

In spite of the fact that neither author shares a similar background or writing style, I reacted to Interpreter of Maladies with the same sense of detached awe as I did Raymond Chandler’s short story collection Cathedral. I suppose it comes from their abilities to portray empty characters in a manner that still feels organic and multidimensional and the fact that both books – while the characters and narratives themselves do not overlap – are presented as a perpetual cycle as a means of highlighting the timeless nature of their themes.

~Riot

[Diversity Rocks! Challenge Progress: 14/24]

Watermark: Vietnamese American Poetry & Prose

Review

Like most compilations of poetry and short stories, Watermark: Vietnamese American Poetry & Prose – edited by Barbara Tran, Monique T.D. Truong, and Luu Truong Khoi – contains some hits, some misses, and some that garner no real opinion at all. Emphasizing the work of Vietnamese-American writers, the title Watermark comes from the word nưóc, which means both “water” and “homeland.” Most of the selections, as expected, revolve around the theme of coming to terms with an identity in two very different cultures. One of the exceptions to this is Linh Dinh’s sleazy short story “Fritz Gatman,” focusing on a racist, misogynistic pseudointellectual contemplating the purchase of a mail-order Asian wife. It’s a twisting, sickening read of a man who feigns interest in a rich cultural heritage for the sake of his own sexual pleasure, cheapening it as a result. Another of Dinh’s short stories, the wonderfully lazy “Western Music,” explores the nation of Vietnam through the eyes of a gay couple seeking an outlet for their hedonistic tendencies.

Other standouts include two short stories by Andrew Lam, “Show and Tell” and ”Grandma’s Tales.” The former, written in an endearing children’s vernacular, concerns a young American boy’s experience with the new Vietnamese student in his eighth grade class. “Grandma’s Tales,” however, was my favorite selection from Watermark. It flows seamlessly from absurd comedy to hallucinogenic depictions of filial love. Of all the contributers to this volume, I am most interested in checking out more of his works. Christian Langworthy’s “Mango” was another superb selection. While the anthology understandably tiptoes carefully around the Vietnam War without entirely ignoring it, Langworthy’s short story confronts the emotions surrounding the two children of a prostitute who services American GI’s. The Americans are never demonized or portrayed as salacious, cruel creatures. Rather, the youthful narrator looks up to some of his mother’s clients as potential father figures; the title comes from a gift given to him from a particularly kindly soldier. “Mango” juxtaposes feelings of idealism and hope in the aftermath of a war.

Much of the poetry included in Watermark seems to favor an atmospheric free verse structure. The “Know by Heart” series by Trinh T. Minh-ha perfectly summarizes the majority of the poems. They paint pictures of scenes and emotions, but for the most part stray away from the main theme uniting the short stories. Where the prose explicitly expressess the relations between the Vietnamese and American aspects of the author’s identity, the poetry typically alludes to it in a more subtle fashion. Obviously there are exceptions, such as Truong Tran’s beautifully flowing contributions, but they are generally overshadowed by free verse depictions of family, broken relationships, or sex.

Bibliographic Information

Tran, Barbara, Monique T.D. Truong, and Luu Truong Khoi, eds. Watermark: Vietnamese American Poetry and Prose. New York: Temple University Press, 1998.

Further Reading

Honestly? I’ve kind of  reached a point where all anthologies, regardless of main theme or intent, kind of blend together. They’re always the same combination of some amazing stories, some bland ones, some that are pretentious, etc. That sounds remarkably cynical, I know, but it’s difficult to make recommendations when the compilations themselves are almost always uneven.

~Riot

[Diversity Rocks! Challenge Progress: 5/24]