Editing Jhumpa Lahiri (section)

==Early and personal life==
Lahiri was born in [[London]], the daughter of Indian immigrants Amar Lahiri and Tapati "Tia" Lahiri ({{nee|Sanyal}}) from the Indian state of [[West Bengal]]. Her father hailed from [[Tollygunge]].<ref name="telegraph india" /> Her mother hailed from [[North Kolkata]].<ref>{{cite news |last=Mitra |first=Prithvijit |date=January 8, 2023 |title=For Jhumpa Lahiri, new Kolkata is 'more global'; it's a 'good jolt' that fuels her creativity |url=https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kolkata/for-jhumpa-new-kolkata-is-more-global-its-a-good-jolt-that-fuels-her-creativity/articleshow/96779267.cms |access-date=May 3, 2025 |work=[[The Times of India]]}}</ref> According to Lahiri, she acquired an Indian passport and "was appended to my mother’s passport. Then I became a naturalised US citizen. Then I got my UK passport because I was born in London, and so in my life I have actually possessed three passports."<ref name="telegraph india" /> Her family moved to the United States when she was three;<ref name= "usa"/> Lahiri considers herself an American and has said, "I wasn't born here, but I might as well have been."<ref name= "usa"/> She has a sister born in the US in November 1974.<ref name="tny">{{cite magazine |last=Lahiri |first=Jhumpa |date=June 6, 2011 |title=Trading Stories |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/06/13/trading-stories |magazine=[[The New Yorker]] |access-date=May 2, 2025 |url-access=subscription}}</ref> 

Lahiri grew up in [[Kingston, Rhode Island]], where her father Amar Lahiri worked as a librarian at the [[University of Rhode Island]];<ref name= "usa"/> the protagonist in "The Third and Final Continent", the story which concludes ''Interpreter of Maladies'', is modeled after him.<ref name= "ew">Flynn, Gillian. [https://ew.com/article/2000/04/28/passage-india/ "Passage To India: First-time author Jhumpa Lahiri nabs a Pulitzer,"]  [[Entertainment Weekly]], April 28, 2000. Retrieved on 2008-04-13.</ref> Lahiri's mother, Tia, a schoolteacher,<ref>{{Cite web|last=J Pais |first=Arthur |url=https://m.rediff.com/movies/2007/mar/12lahiri.htm|title='We have become part of Namesake'|date=March 5, 2006|website=[[Rediff.com]]|access-date=May 2, 2025}}</ref> wanted her children to grow up knowing their [[Bengalis|Bengali]] heritage, and her family often visited relatives in Calcutta (now [[Kolkata]]).<ref name="pig">Aguiar, Arun. [http://www.pifmagazine.com/vol28/i_agui.shtml "One on One With Jhumpa Lahiri"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081007223507/http://pifmagazine.com/vol28/i_agui.shtml |date=October 7, 2008 }}, Pifmagazine.com, July 28, 1999. Retrieved on 2008-04-13.</ref> Her mother was an avid reader of [[Bengali literature]] and occasionally wrote Bengali poems.<ref name="tny" /> Lahiri recalled that her maternal grandfather, a visual artist who died when she was six, would invent stories to tell her.<ref name="tny" /> She can speak and understand the [[Bengali language]] fluently, but is not a fluent reader. It was the language she used to communicate with her parents, and she was "strictly forbidden" to speak any other language apart from Bengali until the age of four.<ref name="language">{{cite news |last=Ghoshal |first=Somak |date=January 30, 2014|title=Jhumpa Lahiri: A writer without a real language |url=https://www.hindustantimes.com/books/jhumpa-lahiri-a-writer-without-a-real-language/story-Cc32j1SY2bXvnb3QVSIDgJ.html |work=[[Hindustan Times]] |access-date=April 16, 2025}}</ref>

When Lahiri began kindergarten, her teachers called her Jhumpa, the name used at her home, because it was easier to pronounce than her more formal given name.<ref name= "usa"/> Lahiri recalled, "I always felt so embarrassed by my name.... You feel like you're causing someone pain just by being who you are."<ref name="vog">Anastas, Benjamin. [http://www.mensvogue.com/arts/books/articles/2007/02/jhumpa_lahiri "Books: Inspiring Adaptation"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080622163028/http://www.mensvogue.com/arts/books/articles/2007/02/jhumpa_lahiri |date=June 22, 2008 }}, ''[[Men's Vogue]]'', March 2007. Retrieved on April 13, 2008.</ref> That was the time when she quickly acquired the English language, "but her parents, especially her mother, never liked her speaking it."<ref name="language" /> She started to write as a child and would steal "one or two" extra notebooks from school closets, which marked her "first dishonest act", and would write fiction, mostly "stories about the victims of mean girls." She still prefers writing in notebooks. She never showed her writing to any adults.<ref name="writing" /> At the age of nine, she "self-published" her first book in 1976 ''The Life of a Weighing Scale'' (also titled ''The Adventures of a Weighing Scale''), which she wrote from the perspective of a [[Weighing scale|bathroom scale]], for her school contest that she won and that "everyone had to write a book. The prize was that it got to be in the school library."<ref name="writing" /><ref name="tny" /> 

She loved acting in plays but was typically cast as the villain such as [[Witchcraft|the Witch]] in "[[Hansel and Gretal]]", [[Queen of Hearts (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland)|the Queen of Hearts]] in ''[[Alice in Wonderland]]'' and [[Fagin]] in "[[Oliver Twist]]", as she thinks "that was partly because I wasn't blond and white, to cut to the chase."<ref name="writing">{{cite magazine |last=Wilson |first=Jennifer |date=January 13, 2025 |title=Jhumpa Lahiri’s Writing Career Began in Stolen Notebooks |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/01/20/jhumpa-lahiris-writing-career-began-in-stolen-notebooks#:~:text=%E2%80%9CI%20never%20had%20a%20cat,had%20to%20write%20a%20book. |magazine=[[The New Yorker]] |access-date=April 22, 2025}}</ref> In her teenage years and beyond, the desire to construct stories were there but her "writing shrank in what seemed to be an inverse proportion to my years" due to her self-doubt and insecurity.<ref name="tny" /> She practised music and performed in plays. With the aspiration to be a journalist, she "worked with words" and wrote articles and essays.<ref name="tny" />

Her ambivalence over her identity was the inspiration for the mixed feelings of Gogol, the protagonist of her novel ''The Namesake'', over his own unusual name.<ref name= "usa"/> In an editorial in ''[[Newsweek]]'', Lahiri claims that she has "felt intense pressure to be two things, loyal to the old world and fluent in the new." Much of her experiences growing up as a child were marked by these two sides tugging away at one another. When she became an adult, she found that she was able to be part of these two dimensions without the embarrassment and struggle that she had when she was a child.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.newsweek.com/my-two-lives-106355|title=My Two Lives|date=March 5, 2006|website=Newsweek|access-date=December 4, 2018|archive-date=December 5, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181205003315/https://www.newsweek.com/my-two-lives-106355|url-status=live}}</ref> 

Lahiri graduated from [[South Kingstown High School]] and received her B.A. in English literature from [[Barnard College]] of [[Columbia University]] in 1989.<ref>[http://www.barnard.edu/newnews/news41100a.htm "Pulitzer Prize awarded to Barnard alumna Jhumpa Lahiri ’89; Katherine Boo ’88 cited in public service award to The Washington Post"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040224080335/http://www.barnard.edu/newnews/news41100a.htm |date=February 24, 2004 }}, Barnard Campus News, April 11, 2000. Retrieved  2008-04-13.</ref> She decided in college that she wanted to be an English professor. The thought of being a writer was low as she wanted to be an ordinary person.<ref name="tny" />

Lahiri then moved to [[Boston]] to pursue a Ph.D., and lived in a rented room within a household of non-relatives. She worked at a bookstore with responsibilities that included opening shipments and operating a cash register.<ref name="tny" /> She friended with a fellow bookstore employee whose father, [[William Corbett (poet)|Bill Corbett]], was a poet.<ref name="tny" /> She frequently visited the Corbett family home, which was "filled with books and art", and spent an entire summer living in the Corbett home. She wrote a few sketches and fragments on a typewriter whenever she was alone.<ref name="tny" /> 

Soon, she secretly aspired again to be a writer. She shared her writings with a person who motivated her "to sit down and produce something." On weekends and at night, she typed stories onto a computer in the office where she worked as a research assistant. She even bought a copy of ''[[Writer's Market]]'' and submitted stories to small literary magazines, but faced multiple rejections.<ref name="tny" /> She enrolled in [[Boston University]] to pursue Master's of English literature. One day, she audaciously requested to sit in on a creative-writing class open only to writing students. [[Leslie Epstein]], the director of the creative writing program at Boston University, made an exception, which led to her formally applying to the programme the next year with a fellowship. Her parents were neutral about the decision.<ref name="tny" /> At the age of 30, she wrote "A Temporary Matter",  her first short story written as an adult, which later became included in her debut short story collection, ''Interpreter of Maladies''.<ref name="tny" />

She earned advanced degrees from [[Boston University]]: an M.A. in English, an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, an M.A. in Comparative Literature, and a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies. Her dissertation, completed in 1997, was titled ''Accursed Palace: The Italian Palazzo on the Jacobean Stage (1603–1625)''.<ref>ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (304346550)</ref> Her principal advisers were William Carroll (English) and Hellmut Wohl (Art History). She took a fellowship at Provincetown's [[Fine Arts Work Center]], which lasted for the next two years (1997–1998). Lahiri has taught creative writing at Boston University and the [[Rhode Island School of Design]].{{cn|date=February 2024}}

In 2001, Lahiri married Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush, a journalist who was then deputy editor of ''[[Time (magazine)|TIME]]'' Latin America, and who is now its senior editor. In 2012, Lahiri moved to [[Rome]]<ref>Spinks, John. [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/08/25/t-magazine/25writers-rooms.html "A Writer's Room"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170423010712/http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/08/25/t-magazine/25writers-rooms.html |date=April 23, 2017 }}, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, August 25, 2013.</ref><ref>{{cite web |first=Sheila |last=Pierce |date=May 22, 2015  | title=Why Pulitzer Prize-winner Jhumpa Lahiri quit the US for Italy |url= https://www.ft.com/content/3b188aec-f8bf-11e4-be00-00144feab7de |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221210/https://www.ft.com/content/3b188aec-f8bf-11e4-be00-00144feab7de |archive-date=December 10, 2022 |url-access=subscription |website=Financial Times |access-date= 20 June 2021}}</ref> with her husband and their two children, Octavio (born 2002) and Noor (b. 2005).<ref name= "vog"/> 

On July 1, 2015, Lahiri joined the [[Princeton University]] faculty as a professor of creative writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://research.princeton.edu/news/faculty-profiles/a/?id=15411 |title=Author Jhumpa Lahiri awarded National Humanities Medal |last=Saxon |first=Jamie |date=September 4, 2015 |publisher=Research at Princeton, Princeton University |access-date=May 15, 2017 |archive-date=June 15, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180615212859/http://research.princeton.edu/news/faculty-profiles/a/?id=15411 |url-status=dead }}</ref>