If certain books are to be termed 'immigrant fiction,' what do we call the rest? Native fiction? Puritan fiction? This distinction doesn't agree with me.
Jhumpa LahiriRead
A bicultural upbringing is a rich but imperfect thing
Interpretation
A bicultural upbringing offers both valuable experiences and challenges.
In this quote, Jhumpa Lahiri reflects on the complexities of growing up with influences from two different cultures. While such an upbringing can provide enriching perspectives and experiences, it is also fraught with difficulties that may arise from navigating between different cultural expectations and identities.
In practice
In a speech about diversity and inclusion, you might use it to highlight the benefits and challenges of bicultural experiences.
If certain books are to be termed 'immigrant fiction,' what do we call the rest? Native fiction? Puritan fiction? This distinction doesn't agree with me.
When I sit down to write, I don't think about writing about an idea or a given message. I just try to write a story which is hard enough.
When I am experiencing a complex story or novel, the broader planes, and also details, tend to fall away.
I think each time you start a story or novel or whatever, you are absolutely at the bottom of the ladder all over again. It doesn't matter what you've done before.
The sky was different, without color, taut and unforgiving. But the water was the most unforgiving thing, nearly black at times, cold enough, I knew, to kill me, violent enough to break me apart. The waves were immense, battering rocky beaches without sand. The farther I went, the more desolate it became, more than any place I'd been, but for this very reason the landscape drew me, claimed me as nothing had in a long time.
On the technical side, I hope that my writing is evolving and maturing, ripening, deepening.
From a hundred cultures, [there is] one culture which does what no culture has ever done before-gives a place to every human gift.
We Americans are childish about our celebrities and icons. We worship, then we denounce; we identify passionately with them and then, if they do something - anything - we dislike, we cast them off.
A truly common culture is not one in which we all think alike, or in which we all believe that fairness is next to godliness, but one in which everyone is allowed to be in on the project of cooperatively shaping a common way of life.
Just as the natural environment depends on biodiversity, so the human environment depends on cultural diversity, because no one civilization encompasses all the spiritual, ethical and artistic expressions of mankind.
Bengalis love to celebrate their language, their culture, their politics, their fierce attachment to a city that has been famously dying for more than a century. They resent with equal ferocity the reflex stereotyping that labels any civic dysfunction anywhere in the world 'another Calcutta.'
The Scythians take kannabis seed, creep in under the felts, and throw it on the red-hot stones. It smolders and sends up such billows of steam-smoke that no Greek vapor bath can surpass it. The Scythians howl with joy in these vapor-baths, which serve them instead of bathing, for they never wash their bodies with water.
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