My Two Lives
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11569225/site/newsweek/
The Pulitzer-winning writer felt intense pressure to be at once 'loyal
to the old world and fluent in the new.'
By Jhumpa Lahiri
Newsweek
March 6, 2006 issue - I have lived in the United States for almost 37
years and anticipate growing old in this country. Therefore, with the
exception of my first two years in London, "Indian-American" has been a
constant way to describe me. Less constant is my relationship to the
term. When I was growing up in Rhode Island in the 1970s I felt neither
Indian nor American. Like many immigrant offspring I felt intense
pressure to be two things, loyal to the old world and fluent in the
new, approved of on either side of the hyphen. Looking back, I see that
this was generally the case. But my perception as a young girl was that
I fell short at both ends, shuttling between two dimensions that had
nothing to do with one another.
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