Jhumpa Lahiri on Writing, Translation, and Crossing Between Cultures | Conversations with Tyler
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- Опубликовано: 10 сен 2024
- Author, teacher, and translator Jhumpa Lahiri joins Tyler for a conversation on identity, Rhode Island, writing as problem solving, reading across languages, the badness of book covers, Elena Ferrante, Bengali culture, the magic of Calcutta, Italian authors, Indian classical music, architectural influences, and much more.
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That's the most intelligent, cultured, charming and beautiful woman I have ever read, seen and heard.
Almost all woman India are like that , no feminism madness in India yet .....
@@kamalpreetsingh1686 Jhumpa is quite the feminist. Please be informed.
@@kamalpreetsingh1686Did you watch the video?
She embodies so much grace and humbleness. She is definitely aware of her skills and impact, but humble enough to recognize new concepts brought to her.
Jhumpa explains Calcutta so well and its so intense. A city with poets, politics, humanity which gives you a jolt but has a character of its own with its flavour and energy.
I like how her ponder and choose words carefully to not give firm, one-cut generalization kind of answer, which may comes off as confidence or charisma on some writers
What an inspiring interview. It is refreshing to hear a conversation with a popular writer that moves beyond the usual questions -- such as to Indian history, books that have influenced her (many new to me here) and writing in Italian that gets her "to look harder." She engages in life with such depth and honesty.
amo il modo di scegliere le parole di questa donna: dimostra cura e rispetto per i propri pensieri e per la domanda dell’interlocutore, emerge un amore per la lingua che mi incanta.
Grazie
"the conscious decision on passing for white" is the classical American question one should always expect in such conversations!!!!
For an interview to be good the person asking the questions should have as much depth as the guest. Tyler has that depth of knowledge to ask and Jhumpa the conviction to answer honestly. I admire both of them for this brilliant piece of conversation.
Her book interpretor of maladies was a masterpiece...
A graceful and elegant lady...
He cuts her off quite a lot, I know time is a limitation in this but there were certain points when she was getting deeper and deeper into something and just as she was about to get past all the external stuff and get to the poignant points, he would jump in and change the question.
I've watched two interviews of Lahiri this morning. Both are male interviewers and they constantly interrupt or start answering their own question with possible answers she might give....This one isn't as bad as the other. Still. Sigh.
If you want to know what it is like for a 1st generation immigrant Indian family to grow up in a university town in the 50's or 60's, then read her books (Namesake, Interpreter of Maladies) about that. They are quite accurate and revealing about this experience. It is the story of my parents and so many engineers, scientists and others that came to America after WWII.
Nice interview!Thank you. The author exhibits her majestic power of storytelling with grace and allure.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Just finished reading 'in other words'
On book covers, blurbs, etc., see Gérard Genette on paratexts. Thanks for posting the interview.
I think I am in love with Jhumpa Lahiri. She is 55 now ( 15 years older than me) and probably married (I also have a girlfriend ) but I am at peace with this 🤷
I really enjoy JL and the way she’s able to recount information in an elegant manner, but the interviewer seems like a showboat. Why did he ask her why is all the Indian intelligence is from Bengal? There were a lot of failed opportunities here...and you can see JL uncomfortable by folding her arms over.
I have to admit as a Bong, that's a fairly weird statement to make not to mention flawed and reductive.
@@sayakchoudhury9711 It has a lot of implied assumptions. You wouldn't ask this question to a European. I just finished reading Interpreter of Maladies, and I am blown away at Lahiri's talent to evoke this sense of loss of being taken seriously. She's my hero!
@@sergiodeandaruiz you are probably right about the prejudicial assumptions. My favourite of her's is The Namesake. I am not an immigrant and very much surrounded by the culture of my people unlike Gogol (the main character). However, I can thoroughly empathise with the feeling of disconnect that he feels. Incidentally, I have a friend named Gogol as well, so the name isn't so strange to me, as it is to him, but the uneasiness at the core of his being is portrayed in a profound way.
I love Jhumpa Lahiri 😍
I love her books.
I have study about Jhumpa Lahiri's novel "the Lowland"
I met a Rhode islander once
I am besotted...
she is so charming
at 34: she mentions the hostility between east bengal and west, muslims and hindus, 'trauma of family losing their ancestral property'. to put this in perspective, in the partition of bengal,, 2 million hindus, muslims were killed. east bengal was mostly agrarian, and the cultivating peasantry were muslim tenants, the landowners being in most instances hindus from the kulin, kayastha, baidya, twice born, castes. whereas prior to the english east india company securing from the mughal emperor the right to collect revenue in bengal, circa 1772, the revenue collection was, naturally enough, the privilege of the muslim gentry, and revenue was collected from the peasant owner-cultivatos . the educated kulin, kayasths, baidyas, were their book keepers, accountants. by 1793, the EICo put in place an arrangement termed as the permanent settlement. the muslim gentry were dispossessed and their erstwhile book-keepers, accountants, were made the landlords, owners of the land, and the peasant cultivators were turned into tenant cultivators. at the stroke of a pen. the english east india company sought to dispossess the existing squirearchy, gentry, rural nobility, and replace them with a class who owed their position to the english. the former were muslims, the latter hindus. the english declared that the aim of the permanent settlement, and its new rural dynamic was to create a class of improving landowners. unfortunately other than book-keeping the new landowners had no clue about agrarian matters. they saw their position as landlords, and any peasant who fell behind on his rents was taken to an english east india company administered court and dispossessed after following the due process of law. owner cultivators who for generations had enjoyed proprietary rights were turned into tenants to be turned off the land by a decree from a court system conducted in an alien language, english, and an alien jurisprudence. a hundred and fifty years later, 1947, the muslim cultivators were finally free of their parasitical landlords. the overwhelming majority of the kulin, kayasth, baidyas were absentee landlords, residing in mansions, bungalows built in extravagant style in calcutta, dhaka, where they could lead lives of indolence, pleasure, music, dance, art, sketching, painting, sculpture, theatre, and educate their sons in the mission compound schools, to attend universities modeled on england's oxbridge. that the exploited happened to not be hindus, while the rack-renters, their enforcers, bailiffs, stewards, bruisers, happened to be hindus was a matter of sociology, and had little to do with religious schism, strife, differences.
Books on the stage floor? (Where the feet is) Boy that is blasphemous
24:45
She is like decent Indian woman.....
Because she's an Indian 🤷♂️
wonder why she says she can't read or write bengali
Because she probably can't.
I'm not Indian but I can read and write Hindi. The Hindi Devanagari alphabet is an abugida -- an alphasyllabary which uses a rule set separate from our Latin script. Bengali is also an abugida.
Bengali and Hindi are fairly simple and phonetic -- they're not nearly as difficult to learn as Arabic or its derivatives. But unless you have a particular reason to learn, you likely won't. Many of my Indian-American friends can speak their parents' mother tongue but can't read or write it, either.
If she never learned to read Bengali, she'd either have to take a class or learn independently. I don't doubt she could if she wanted to, as she's obviously a very intelligent woman.
Because doesn't know the bengaly alphabet. It is just oral experience with her parents.
@@aDarkRedJungle it's about preference and utility. She didn't have any use for learning Bengali. She grew up speaking English in USA, Bengali is a foreign language to her. But she is learning Italian, a language she really loves and has made a choice to learn, which is amazing.
@@sayakchoudhury9711 Yes, I agree with you--that's why I said that, "unless you have a particular reason to learn [a language], you probably won't." You said it in fewer words than I did, however--I think "utility" was a great way to say what I was trying to express.
@@sayakchoudhury9711 Sorry (for my "google-eng" firstly, I hope I can explain) but it's not exactly how you writing, she explained this feeling well in an interview that I saw some time ago; she said that when had her first child in her arms she naturally spoke to him in bengali and couldn't speak to him in english (or italian) because it was as if the words didn't come out of his mouth (like something ancestral).
So it's not just a question of usefulness or love of a language, from what you write seems she doesn't love the bengali language but that's not correct (in fact she speaks it and understands it very well, just doesn't write it).
Obviously this doesn't mean she doesn't love italian (the language chosen) or english (the one who always spoken).
59:00 defence of school uniforms
Hi fellow bookworm !!!!
Tell me a few books that's impacted & stayed with you for a long time !!!!!
A Fine Balance
A little life by Hanya Yanagihara
Unaccustomed earth
The God of Small Things
@@manikyapannu7723 oh I absolutely love that 1!
Leery Jumper!
MusicFloto??
metti like se sei qui per la papapietro
Pretentious and self-conscious. People learn new languages as adults all the time. I speak six including French (which I learnt after I was 40) and am fluent in three scripts. She is of Indian extraction and it's not surprising that she knows about Indian history.That said from what I know she cannot read or write Bengali which is technically her mother tongue - her parents are of 100 percent Indian-Bengali extraction. I don't believe she speaks it very well either.
So effing what
I'm always amazed how Indian people always proudly say they don't speak their own language but are very eager to learn other languages. How about connecting to your own roots first?
She speaks Bengali very well.
She's an international citizen..well versed in Bengali ..but hardly defined by it
@@latha6981Well said
Calcutta is the woke capital of India. Decades of communist violence, specially during elections, and they still don't see the connection.
Wonder what your reaction is about the current govt violence.
I hope her writing would not be like her interview
Sattar Reza-e what do you mean ?
You should read her work: Namesake, The interpreter of Maladies, Unaccustomed Earth... And come back here to this comment and explain yourself! She is one of the best and most impactful authors ever!
who are you to judge!!!
I don’t get it she speaks so precisely and expresses with such an accuracy . Why ?
@@bony0889 agreed
Check Jhumpa's interviews (Charlie Rose) before her plastic surgeries and before she started thinking that looking dead-serious makes her look Italian. Affected to the gills.
?
I don't think a woman of substance like her will go for plastic surgery just to look a certain way. And looking serious is not her cosmetic effort, I think she naturally is a person with serious demeanor
I have seen this comment in that interview also. There is nothing plastic about her and even if she had Botox what the hell is wrong with that and what has ghat got to do with her intellect and énorme skill as a writer ? Yes she is serious not some animated gimmick