In Other Words: A Memoir

A deeply personal and moving account of learning a foreign language. Some readers have griped that she spends too much time discussing the process of learning Italian, ignoring other, arguably more interesting aspects of life in Rome, like culture and the logistics of moving abroad. Personally, though, I appreciated this intense focus. As someone who has learned several foreign languages, lived abroad in various countries for years, and read travel literature extensively, I was relieved to find a writer who didn’t wax poetic about travel and try to neatly summarize another culture, who instead chose the riskier (and braver) task of showing just how messy and jarring being immersed in another language is. (Read enough travel literature, and you too, will become tired of neat, beautifully-written narratives that serve only to show how brave and smart the writer thinks they are, while pretending to be about loftier topics like culture and politics. Vulnerability is refreshing, even if it occasionally produces unpolished sentences.) Although her writing is sparse, and sometimes cliché, it manages to pack a punch. It’s both deeply vulnerable and distant, a tension that kept me interested until the end. It’s certainly not written for mass appeal. I suspect those who’d be most interested are language learners who can relate to the author’s experiences. Towards the end of the book, she draws a parallel between her writing in Italian and Matisse’s abstract cutouts. The analogy seems apt: this book isn’t about realism, despite its autobiographical nature. It’s more of an impression, an intense depiction of learning, rather than a real life portrait of life abroad. The following excerpts capture her intentions in writing this book quite well: - “It’s a travel book, more interior, I would say, than geographic…And absurd journey, given that the traveler never reaches her destination.” - “In Italian, I’m moving toward abstraction. The places are undefined, the characters so far are nameless, without a particular cultural identity. The result, I think, is writing that is freed in certain ways from the concrete world.”

Jhumpa Lahiri is among my favorite writers, but my admiration for her has elevated to another level of respect with her first non-fiction work, In Other Words. This is no ordinary memoir or collection of reflective essays. This is a writer taking her passion for the art and beauty of language to an unparalleled degree of exploration. Lahiri’s lifelong love of Italian compelled her to move with her family to Rome in order to immerse herself in the language. Not only did she desire to speak Italian, she decided to write exclusively in it as well. Her devotion to Italian went so far as abandoning her use of English. She recounts this journey with great honesty and candor, revealing how vulnerable, insecure, and uncertain she felt along the way. Even with all she has given to learning the language, Lahiri shares her trepidation that her Italian will forever be inadequate and ungraspable, but I found her expressiveness in the language to be quite profound. In the memoir’s simplicity, she is insightful and full of great wisdom and self-reflection. I was fascinated with how smooth, graceful, and exquisite her prose was in translation from Italian back into English. She confesses her feelings of estrangement from her native language of Bengali and her dominant language of English. She discusses the relationship between art and imperfection, passion and impulse, and alienation and acceptance. She writes to discover and make sense of herself and the world, and the result is a rapturous memoir and an altogether mesmerizing treatise for anyone who dares to undertake a passion with every ounce of sacrifice and commitment required to make it possible. I loved this book. It is incredibly inspiring, and I admire Lahiri more than ever. She is a talented writer and an amazing human being.

I bought this book late last year, as I was in the midst of learning Mandarin. I thought it would inspire me in my own language-learning journey. IN OTHER WORDS opens with a beautiful metaphoric analogy of the author swimming in a lake. Metaphorically speaking, that lake is Italian--the language itself. The book reads like a diary (it's based on one). In the first third of the book, Ms. Lahiri seems hesitant, unsure. She uses very simple words and short sentences--almost childlike. At one point, she reveals that she feels hesitant and childlike as she writes in Italian: it is a stark contrast from her facile relationship with English, in which she-as a Pulitzer Prize-winning author-is extremely accomplished. The endeavor of learning Italian is, to me, laudable. But when you learn/realize that the book was actually written in Italian, then translated into English, you realize that this is a major accomplishment. As the author gains mastery in Italian, the writing/vocabulary and personality seem more sophisticated, more grown-up. Ms. Lahiri writes of the year she and her family spent living in Italy, of her encounters in stores, of her conversations with Italians--many of whom are friends or acquaintances. I enjoyed reading those anecdotes. The book is not just about language-learning: IOW chronicles the author's self-discovery, as she fulfills this longtime dream. I marvelled at her determination. For, as she states in the book, there is no reason for her to learn Italian, except that she loves it. I compared my language-learning approach (which I wrote about on my blog), and you will, too. If you're learning a new language, you will enjoy reading of the author's inspirational experience.

In Jhumpa Lahiri’s In Other Words, the author explores four main points about learning and becoming immersed in a new language. These points are some of the most important points she discusses, but they are by no means the only points she ventures into. The first of these points explores how language journey. Lahiri was not able to write this novel in Italian until several years after first learning about the language, showing that language is not a short plane ride but rather a long drive. Her second point is that language becomes more familiar and comfortable overtime. Through her various stories, analogies, and past reflections, Jhumpa talks about the struggle her language barrier had in the earlier years of her studies and how it slowly progressed into a more fluent dialect over time. Another point explored was as she immersed herself into Italian culture, she slowly blossomed in terms of Italian. She tells us you can’t fully know a language until you live it. Her immersion in the language and the culture helped progress her ability to simply know the language. Fourthly, Lahiri talked about how she was treated as a foreigner even though she knew the language and culture extremely well. People had an underlying or implicit bias towards Lahiri because she looked like a foreigner or tourist. These points help the book come together and summarize how immersion in a new language is a journey that you best prepare for. Overall the book was strong. The book was motivating and relatable. She didn’t hold back on her thoughts on language immersion throughout the book, which allowed the reader to really trust her and what she said. Not everything was perfect, however. It did get fairly repetitive towards the end of the book, as she tended to explore the same point in different ways and context. Overall this book is for anyone who is looking in pursuing a new language and wants to know what type of journey they are in for.

I have read and enjoyed all of Ms. Lahiri's books. Her father actually worked at the Library at the University I attended when I was there (I did not know him) and she grew up close to where I lived while at University. I was drawn to this book because I am a third culture "kid". I was brought up in Rome as an American. As such when I had read that Ms. Lahiri was living in Rome and writing this I was looking forward to this book. Sadly, it did not meet my expectations. It's a bit repetitive, a bit self indulgent and without humor, laughter and mostly about her many irritations with growing up and never fitting in any language/culture. This despite the fact that she is a scholar with three Masters' degrees, a PhD, a Pulitzer prize and extremely well received novels. Yet she decides to abandon English and immerse herself in Italian. It works in that she becomes fluent in Italian in a year and decides to write exclusively in Italian as well. But in the end the book is mildly irritating. I'm not sure she truly understands the Italian culture, and if she does she writes with no evidence of it. She complains, complains, and complains -- about most things in Italy and writing in English. I would recommend only for those folks who want to follow her career closely.

humpa Lahiri grew up in New England to Indian parents and admits to always having struggled with her identity. She spoke Bengali at home and English at school, but never seemed to feel like either language or identity (Indian or American) fully belonged to her. After college, on a vacation to Florence, Lahiri fell in love with Italian. She then spent years studying but never fully mastering Italian. In her memoir, In Other Words, Lahiri attempts something unusual and brave. The book centers around the two years Lahiri and her family (husband and two children) spent in Rome. During those two years, Lahiri read, wrote, spoke, and thought exclusively in Italian. The stories that eventually became In Other Words started as a journal reflecting on this experience. Lahiri's book is unusual because she chooses to abandon English in favor of Italian. She finds herself extremely limited with how she can express herself in this new language. But she finds these limitations freeing. Immersing herself in a new language forces her to think harder about the words and their meanings. It forces her to think differently. Lahiri's experiment is brave because she took many risks--moving to a new country, attempting a new culture and language, writing a book that exposes/reveals her intimate thoughts about her experiences. I read the English translation and in some ways felt sad that I am limited to only one language. But even translated (Lahiri chose not to translate the book herself), this is an author who writes beautiful prose and has a way with language. Interesting, different, and a fast read--definitely worth the time.

I am reading this book on my kindle which is a bit of a struggle because it is difficult to flip between Italian and English. Just ordered the hard cover because this is a very special book. Learning a new language is difficult and exhilarating at the same time because it opens your mind to a different way of thinking. I have been going through the learning process in various languages and it is always gratifying when you can actually have a conversation in a language that is not your native tongue. This book expresses in a beautiful way describes the process of learning a new language with thoughts and concerns that I recognize in my own efforts to communicate as much as I can in the language of the people I work with especially in my activities as coach and negotiator. I recognize now what actually happens in the mind because Jhumpa has the gift to describe and put into words what has for me just thinking in the background. A book that makes you exclaim: "yes, that's how it feels. I have never been able to put a finger on that feeling but this is exactly what I feel when struggling to learn a language or improve" is very special and rare. It is like a very good coach or mentor pointing out a behavior that you know you have but never knew why you did certain things or felt certain things. In short: this amazing book brings tears in my eyes because of the deep recognition it evokes about language, culture, being expatriated, being there while being somewhere else. Highly recommended.

While reading Lahiri’s In Other Words, I found the book to be beautifully natural. Lahiri found a way to put her thoughts down on paper while being very authentic. Normally while reading literature, I find myself wanting authors to be more pure, and less edited in what they truly want to put down on paper. I found the piece to be the complete opposite of what I normally read, which was very refreshing. I was able to get a true understanding of what went through Lahiri’s mind while writing In Other Words. There were many points where she opens up, letting herself be truly vulnerable in her writing. It shows how you can be very powerful with your words; speaking your mind can add a whole new layer to your concepts. While I have found many authors protect their ideas, Lahiri shows a new way of expressing her thoughts, imparting a great amount of passion towards her journey of learning language. I did find the book to be a little repetitive. It felt a little too long for the type of story. It would have been easier to read if it was condensed down. I also really appreciated the amount of relatability in this piece. As a college student, I have taken many language classes, but have struggled to perfect the language, regardless of the amount of years I have spoken it. Lahiri struggles with this as well. She bounces between many Italian tutors, yet feels incomplete since she has not been immersed long enough in the Italian culture to really grasp Italian. A large population of people struggle with acquiring a second language, and this common place makes the book just that much more relatable. So many people want to read about topics that they can empathize with, and this topic on the difficulty of learning a language is valuable to a lot of different types of people.

a superbly written book on a journey to learning Italian

A lire pour les bilingues tardifs

I love how this book reflects and makes art out of a not so often talked about language discomfort, identity matter. As a Brazilian who lives in the UK but is also fascinated by the Italian Language this book made me feel like someone understands me. It is beautifully written and shows the world that art can transcend language barriers.

Jhumpa Lahiri yet another again writes a remarkably poignant and introspective set of essays in this book. I had to remind myself constantly about the fact that the book was originally written in Italian and then translated by Ann Goldstein. The afterword of the book brings together her remarkable penance and pilgrimage of 2 years in Italy - reading, writing, living and breathing the language. I did not appreciate the attachment writers have with a language, their only tool, I did not realise this deep bond with their words, like a painter would be attached to her brushes, like a violinist to her violin. Ms. Lahiri pens a diary of thoughts interspersed with 2 very short stories. The writing as is characteristic of Ms. Lahiri is incredible, it is simple, straightforward and hard-hitting. "I think of my mother, who writes poems in Bengali, in America. Almost fifty years after moving there, she can't find a book written in her language." Her acumen pervades through all her sentences, and she makes an effort to inform the reader about the angst of a writer, of love, of loss, of estrangement and of the odyssey. In concluding the book she writes about Henri Matisse the great French artist who chose paper as his new medium, for Ms. Lahiri too her pure thought unencumbered by language gave her a freedom that she channelized into this very fine book. It made me wonder if it is more powerful in Italian. However, kudos to Ann Goldstein who keeps Ms. Lahiri's sentences beautifully preserved. I once heard someone say "if you are going west, see the Grand Canyon, one of the few things in life that does not disappoint !". It could be equally well applicable about Ms. Lahiri, if you are planning to sit down with a good book, pick up Ms. Lahiri, she is one of the few people who does not disappoint !!

Amor a la lengua