Place-Based Translingualism, Identity, and the Contemporary World Literary Space: Jhumpa Lahiri's Turn to Italian

Abstract

abstract:This article discusses Jhumpa Lahiri's recent turn to Italian through a formal and linguistic analysis of the creative and editorial projects she has undertaken in the last decade. By analyzing the author's trajectory from In Other Words (2016) to Whereabouts (2021) and by discussing two short stories she has published in the interval between her linguistic autobiography and her first Italian novel, the article argues that Lahiri's aesthetic and political concerns have transitioned from a utopian search for cosmopolitan encounters to a sharper attention to place-making and grounded relationality. Concurrently, her writing has moved from the pursuit of placeless abstraction to a more pronounced interest in site-specific forms of social bonding. The article further situates Lahiri's translingual practice within paradigms of postcolonial, diasporic, and translingual writing, and discusses how her choice to forsake a dominant language for a semi-peripheral one requires a different critical approach that considers both intrinsic and extrinsic factors. In fully embracing the precarious translational space between Italian and English, the article contends that Lahiri's latest reinvention contributes to deprovincializing both the Italian and the Anglophone literary field, while offering new ways of articulating identity, cultural belonging, and community in comparative and world literature studies.