Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words

When a Pulitzer Prize winner such as Jhumpa Lahiri, an American-born daughter of Indian immigrants, travels to Rome in order to learn another language and start over as an Italian writer, you get the sense that only a world without closed borders should exist to a really civilized and broad-minded spirit. Despite not being a life-changing book, In other Words is the result of an almost inhuman effort to describe a learning process marked by pain and frustration and anxiety. After reading Lahiri’s memoir, we tend to agree with the writer who said that all education is violent. If you wish to be fluent in Italian, or if your desire is to write like an Italian native, you have to push yourself beyond your limits. Actually, it is not enough to pay for some Italian language classes or read Umberto Eco’s books in the original, you have to think as if you were another person. You have to be an Italian.

As a Portuguese native speaker struggling to convert my Portuguese thoughts and writings to English, I assume that Lahiri’s Italian learning process, initiated 20 years ago with some individual classes in NY and ended recently with her long-term staying in Rome, must have been all but easy. Two decades are more than enough to master anything. In twenty years, you have time to write 6 novels. Nevertheless, having been reading in English since I was a little child, I know how hard it is to be fluent in a second language without constant practicing. If you live in a non-English speaking country, how can you eloquently communicate in English? Despite reading tons of books and paying for private classes, there is always something missing. A foreign visitor comes across you and words do not come out naturally, you feel dumb and rusty, you blame yourself for not having what might be called a talent to assimilate another language. Which preposition should I use? In, on. Is my English accent ridiculous? By reading Lahiri’s memoir, you surrender to the evidence that your problem is not so much of a cognitive as of a cultural or a geographical kind. If Lahiri stayed in the United States, she would not have written this beautifully inspirational book.

Aside from sharing her learning experiences not only in a new language but also in a new (savage and uncontrolled) way of writing, Lahiri dived into the vast ocean of the Italian literature. A reader would misunderstand this book if only considered the linguistic aspects. As a matter of fact, In Other Words is all about culture, literature, and admiration for classic writers such as Dante. What made Lahiri follow a new path as a writer was an insatiable thirst for knowledge. Instigated by the desire of absorbing one of the world’s richest cultures, Jhumpa Lahiri became part of that culture and contributed to eradicating the prejudiced assumption that you have to be born in a country to be part of that country. As this book shows, you are neither destined to speak your parents language nor the language spoken in the place where you grew up. You are destined to be yourself.