I strongly identified with several of the characters and their struggles in accepting (or rejecting) aspects of the culture they inherited from their parents. Lahiri’s prose, rich and layered, has a knack for describing nuanced, complex feelings that I’ve never been able to put into words. To be fair, her father literally shared his name with Ashoke, Gogol’s father. One of my friends literally put down the book for this reason she said she resonated with the book a little too strongly for her taste. The Namesake paints a stunning and vivid portrait of the first-generation immigrant experience that is often too relatable. The Namesake begins with Gogol’s birth in the United States and follows him into his forties, capturing vivid moments of life, love, grief, and everything in between. While his parents struggle to preserve their traditions and culture in their new home, Gogol wrestles with his identity as a first-generation immigrant, his obligations to his parents’ culture, and his own-a struggle that is only too relatable. Gogol’s parents, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli immigrated to the United States in the 1960s for Ashoke’s PhD. In The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri contextualizes the immigrant experience of South Asian Americans through the life of Gogol Ganguli and his family. And The Namesake does quite the job in capturing those nuanced and complicated feelings. The reality from what I’ve felt and observed in friends and family is much more complex. I’m usually reluctant to pick up books that speak on the South Asian American experience because the ones I have read have often been ridden with stereotypes and characters who had a very superficial connection to their identity, often with either a complete devotion to the culture or a complete disdain. Hey everyone! For APIDA month, I finally picked up The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri to read and review because it’s one of those books that came highly recommended and has been stuck on TBR list for a very long time.

The namesake jhumpa