Jhumpa Lahiri: The Namesake
Selected Excerpt
But nothing feels normal to Ashima. For the past eighteen months, ever since she's arrived in Cambridge, nothing has felt normal at all. It's not so much the pain, which she knows, somehow, she will survive. It's the consequence: motherhood in a foreign land. For it was one thing to be pregnant, to suffer the queasy mornings in bed, the sleepless nights, the dull throbbing in her back, the countless visits to the bathroom. Throughout the experience, in spite of her growing discomfort, she'd been astonished by her body's ability to make life, exactly as her mother and grandmother and all her great-grandmothers had done. That it was happening so far from home, unmonitored and unobserved by those she loved, had made it more miraculous still. But she is terrified to raise a child in a country where she is related to no one, where she knows so little, where life seems so tentative and spare.
"How about a little walk? It might do you good," Patty asks when she comes to clear the lunch tray.
Ashima looks up from a tattered copy of Desh magazine that she'd brought to read on her plane ride to Boston and still cannot bring herself to throw away. The printed pages of Bengali type, slightly rough to the touch, are a perpetual comfort to her. She's read each of the short stories and poems and articles a dozen times. There is a pen-and-ink drawing on page eleven by her father, an illustrator for the magazine: a view of the North Calcutta skyline sketched from the roof of their flat one foggy January morning. She had stood behind her father as he'd drawn it, watching as he crouched over his easel, a cigarette dangling from his lips, his shoulders wrapped in a black Kashmiri shawl.
"Yes, all right," Ashima says.
Patty helps Ashima out of bed, tucks her feet one by one into slippers, drapes a second nightgown around her shoulders.
"Just think," Patty says as Ashima struggles to stand. "In a day or two you'll be half the size."
She takes Ashima's arm as they step out of the room, into the hallway. After a few feet Ashima stops, her legs trembling as another wave of pain surges through her body. She shakes her head, her eyes filling with tears.
"I cannot."
"You can. Squeeze my hand. Squeeze as tight as you like."
After a minute they continue on, toward the nurses' station.
"Hoping for a boy or a girl?" Patty asks.
"As long as there are ten finger and ten toe," Ashima replies. For these anatomical details, these particular signs of life, are the ones she has the most difficulty picturing when she imagines the baby in her arms.
Patty smiles, a little too widely, and suddenly Ashima realizes her error, knows she should have said "fingers" and "toes." This error pains her almost as much as her last contraction. English had been her subject. In Calcutta, before she was married, she was working toward a college degree. She used to tutor neighborhood schoolchildren in their homes, on their verandas and beds, helping them to memorize Tennyson and Wordsworth, to pronounce words like sign and cough, to understand the difference between Aristotelian and Shakespearean tragedy. But in Bengali, a finger can also mean fingers, a toe toes.
Discussion Questions
What was your reaction to this excerpt? How does Ashima attempt to bring her worlds together? What might this tell us about migrant peoples' health?
How do you interpret Ashima’s reaction to her “error” in grammar? What does this suggest about her experience living in America? What is the significance of this moment?
What lessons can we draw from this piece in order to foster a culturally safe environment in healthcare settings and beyond?
Reflections from #MedHumChat
“I winced when I read the bit about her nurse smiling just a little too widely when Ashima stumbled over her English. I wince each time I see someone making specific assumptions & speaking extra loudly to patients who don’t speak American-accented English.” —@KamnaBalharaMD
“Much much love and loneliness, to be away from one’s motherland. The dedication and love for their future family. Recognition that this is their new home and the need to create family and a home. They live simply with hope for growth and health.” —@rabrazzak
“Her experience highlights greater, systemic problems: 1) cultural sensitivity/ safety/monitoring our OWN reactions 2) the need to not only physically “house” newcomers but provide them with purpose & dignity. Many are stripped from a lifetime of achievement.” —@shabsjams
“I wonder whether asking patients something like: what does home mean for you? is a way of beginning to see where they're coming from, outside of the conventions of birthplace, (non)citizenship, languages spoken, ethnicity, etc.” —@sadiqademeijer
About this #MedHumChat
“The Namesake” was paired with “Red-Eye,” a poem by Sadiqa de Meijer for a #MedHumChat on July 1, 2020 on Humanizing the Experience of Migrants.
The pieces for this chat, along with the discussion questions, were selected by Ashna Asim (@AshnaAsim) and Sadiqa de Meijer (@sadiqademeijer).
We were honored to host Sadiqa de Meijer, the author of this piece, as a special guest for this discussion.
About the Author
Jhumpa Lahiri is a Pulitzer Prize winning author and Guggenheim Fellow who was born in London and raised in Rhode Island. Her works highlight the journeys and struggles of immigrants.