August 01, 2020

Dear Pulitzer Prize judging board,

I’m writing to you today in regards to Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri. The book was awarded your prestigious honor in the year 2000 but I have to disagree. I believe that this book doesn’t deserve this honor. When I picked up a book called Interpreter of Maladies, I figured it would be a book about the lives of people dealing with various ailments. That is not at all what this book is about. It is a collection of short stories about immigrants traveling, or people in India suffering from different issues, whether it’s homelessness, wanting to be normal, or wanting a husband. Some of the stories talk about arranged marriages, some people wanting them, others just to honor their families, and others talk about people who are in marriages, whether it was arranged or not. It most likely won its award for some of the short stories being able to make the reader feel like they are invested in what is going on in these characters’ lives. The reader can have some connection to these stories even if they have not lived like this.

I don’t believe this book deserves a Pulitzer Prize because I didn’t really enjoy it. It was difficult to relate to characters since majority were way older then me, and the foreshadowing towards something bad happening really made me feel uncomfortable to where I had to skip a few pages. I didn’t really understand where most of the stories are coming from, even though I am Indian and many people in my family have had arranged marriages. I believe like this book is geared to people older than I am, who are from immigrant families or are first generation immigrants themselves. Perhaps my opinion will change when I have more life experience to compare. The writer’s style is a narrative since the book is multiple short stories bonded together, the common thread in each of the stories is that the main characters are Indian or are talking/describing what is going about another Indian.  The last short story was really interesting with how it is about an immigrant man moving to America from London after getting married and he stays with this old woman named Mrs. Croft who is his landlord. He finds out she is 103 years old. At the end of the story he and his wife meet his landlord who he had paid eight dollars for rent, dies later on and her obituary is in the newspaper and he feels bad for her, yet he only knew her for six weeks. To quote from the book “It was Mala who consoled me when, reading the Globe one evening, I came across Mrs. Crofts’ obituary. I had not thought about her in several months – by then those six weeks of summer were already a remote interlude in my past – but when I learned of her death I was stricken,”pg.196. His son goes to college and is surprised to find out that when his dad was in college he only had to pay eight dollars for rent. Another story I kind of enjoyed was one about a boy named Eliot who is eleven years old was being babysat by this Indian woman who is called Mrs. Sen and how she spends so much time making these meals, and how she likes to order fresh fish and have her husband pick them up. to quote from the book “”Under Sen, yes, S as in Sam, N as in New York. Mr Sen will be there to pick it up.” Then she would call Mr. Sen at the university. A few minutes later Mr. Sen would arrive, patting Eliot on the head but not kissing Mrs. Sen.”pg.124. Near the end of the story the woman goes with the boy driving in the car and she accidentally has a car crash, so Eliot is never babysat by Mrs. Sen ever again.

During the 2000s I assume there was a lot of xenophobia in the country after 9/11. Jhumpa Lahiri was mainly writing semi-autobiographical stories about mostly first generation Indian immigrants. She seems to mostly draw from either her own experiences, or people who are around her, like her parents or friends. Interpreter of Maladies is recognizing the trauma of rebuilding of lives after immigration, which can result in a series of broken identities. Lahiri’s stories show the diasporic struggle to keep hold of culture as characters create new lives in foreign lands.

I want to thank you the Pulitzer Prize judging board for you consideration all the time that you put in deciding which books deserve the honor of having the Pulitzer Prize. While I’ll disagree that this book should have won this award, I do believe it has cultural value. The book gives the theme of the struggles of marriage no matter if you are in a love marriage or an arranged marriage. These struggles can be the same no matter where you are, whether you are in the western world or a developing country.

Best regards,

Zoe Xavier

Student, ARS