Transnational Transactions and the Indian Woman: Interrogating Jhumpa Lahiri's Universalism

Abstract

A recently published volume of essays consecrates Jhumpa Lahiri as a unique Asian American writer who writes feelingly of roots and routes, exile and melancholia, and has “universal” reach and appeal. This essay interrogates Lahiri's universalism by examining the representation of “Indian” and “Indian-American” women in her fiction. Eschewing the complexity of the Indian nation and the history of Indian women's movements, her fiction reaffirms stereotypes about Indian femininity to global readers. Though Lahiri's eminent literary position apparently opens up a space for Indianness, it sets back the clock in the representation of Indian women's concerns in globally visible fictions.