The Namesake

Last night I sacrificed sleep to finish the last pages of "The Namesake" by Jhumpa Lahiri (I love when I find a book that gets me so involved that I can't put it down; any chance I can get to sneak in a couple pages, I'll take it!) I picked this book up because it was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and I had heard good things about it, and it lived up to the high expectations I had for it.

Quick rundown: A young couple move to America from Calcutta and begin their life, trying to hold on to their culture and yet assimilate into American life. They have a family and name their child Gogol (there is a whole back story to how he got his name), which he comes to hate. He subsequently attempts to distance himself from everything associated with his name by changing it, and as a result, his parents and heritage. In the end, he finds that he really can't escape who he is and where he has come from.

So it all comes back to the age-old question; nurture or nature? Which figures more prominently in deciding the type of person you will be and the direction your life will take. Looking at me and my siblings, I see a huge argument for nature. Even though we were all raised in the same environment, we are all very different people. True, there are some attributes that we can look at and say "Oh, that is Dad" or "That is so Mom" (I am ALL my mother!), there are other things about each of us that are unique to us. But then I look around at other people and see evidence for nurture. My mom is a special ed/resource room teacher and we have discussed the possibility that some of her students wouldn't be in her class if they had a different home environment. How can you expect a child to excel in academics when there isn't a single book in the home?

Because this is a book about immigrants in America, there is a lot of discussion about culture and whether it is better to live as you did in the previous country or completely assimilate into American culture. I think the family in this novel shows a pretty typical picture of immigrant families; the parents cling to the old lifestyle and customs while the next generation attempts to "fit in." This has been such a hot-button issue with the illegal-immigration and language questions floating around in politics. I love that America is an open country where people from all over can come and bring their differences to add to the mix. However, that being said, I also believe that an effort should be made to become a part of the American culture, i.e. learning the language.

I really enjoyed the way this book was written and want to go look for others she has written. I love when I take a chance and it pays off!