IDENTITY, MIGRATION AND CULTURAL CONFLICT IN JHUMPA LAHIRI’S FICTION

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Abstract

Jhumpa Lahiri’s fiction offers one of the most nuanced literary representations of migration, cultural displacement and identity formation in contemporary Indian-American writing. Her characters inhabit emotional and geographical spaces between India and the United States, and their lives reveal the complexities of belonging to more than one cultural world. This paper examines identity, migration and cultural conflict in Interpreter of Maladies, The Namesake, Unaccustomed Earth and The Lowland. Using qualitative textual analysis and concepts from diaspora studies, postcolonial theory and cultural studies, the study focuses on naming, memory, food, family, language, generational difference, gender, assimilation and the idea of home. It argues that Lahiri does not present diasporic identity as a simple choice between Indian tradition and American modernity. Instead, identity develops through negotiation, loss, adaptation and emotional inheritance. First-generation immigrants often experience nostalgia and cultural isolation, while their children confront different pressures concerning authenticity, assimilation and inherited expectations. Lahiri’s restrained narrative style makes domestic spaces central to these larger cultural questions. Her fiction ultimately suggests that belonging is not a fixed destination but an evolving relationship among memory, place, family and selfhood

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