Her behavior and daily life continue to be structured around her cultural heritage Mrs. When reading the letter she is no longer present in the room with the pear-colored carpet (122). The letters she gets from home are a high point in her life she asks Eliot to look for them, covering her eyes like a giddy child at Christmas. She is still deeply connected to India and her family there, replying to Eliots assertion that she could go anywhere by saying ∼ould I drive all the way to Calcutta? How long would that take, Eliot? Ten thousand miles, at fifty miles per hour? (119). Sen replies to Eliots mother ∾verything is there (113). When asked if her chauffeur is in India, Mrs.

Sen said home, she meant India, not the apartment where she sat chopping vegetables (116). Sens, feels this sense of loss in her daily life she cant get the fresh fish to which she is used, and comments that the fish in America tasted nothing like the fish in India, at least it was fresh (Mrs. Though America has long had an idyllic image in the minds of people abroad, some immigrants learn that the streets in America are not paved with gold. While living in America and integrating to some degree or another to American life, these Indians strive to maintain a link to their Indian heritage. Instead they focus on the often subtle struggle to maintain a sense of identity and home in a foreign setting. Her stories do not focus on such well-worn themes as racism or intolerance. One of the qualities that Jhumpa Lahiri brings to her short story collection Interpreter of Maladies is a portrait of Indians that does not rely on archetypes the image of the incense-burning Hindu with the omnipresent dotstill the Western view of the Indianhas little place in her stories.

The literary world was no longer dominated by white authors writing with a primarily eurocentric stylemore books, poems, and short stories appeared written by non-whites featuring issues such as racism, immigration, and the struggle to maintain a cultural identity in the American melting pot. In the late twentieth century multicultural writing became a powerful force in fiction. Maintaining Cultural Identity in Interpreter of Maladies

Mrs sen interpreter of maladies