In Other Words

I love the concept of this memoir. It's not a memoir of Lahiri's life, just her obsession with learning and speaking Italian. I can relate, having lived in Italy a while and falling in love with the language, but my desire to learn it is nowhere near Lahiri's. Finding out that it's actually a memoir of learning another language really made me love the title too.

She also read the audiobook herself, which is something I always love. Don't get me wrong, I get the point between needing a separate narrator for books, but I especially love a memoir read by the author. It's not common, but I have run across those who don't. I enjoyed the audiobook and her manner of speaking throughout it. Lahiri has a beautiful voice.

As far as her obsession show more itself and the many methods by which she went through the process of learning Italian, I am pretty inspired. I've been struggling with Spanish my whole life. I'm Cuban on my mother's side but also first generation American born there too, so Spanish had been her first language and that of most of her side of the family. I could talk to them with limited ability to speak but a lot of understanding what they were saying as a child but I couldn't speak Spanish. Most of them know English by now too but inevitably return to their first language when they're together. I catch snippets, but that's about it these days. I just haven't been in a Spanish language environment enough to sustain what I knew since I moved out.

BUT Lahiri's idea to start a journal or diary in that language is genius. Even if it's all wrong, there is this safe space for trying pull the language out of your own brain, for trying to put together sentences when there is time to do so. One of the things that has driven me crazy about learning Spanish is the way people are always like "Just go out there and talk to people" and "immersion is the best method!" Somewhere along the way, these people missed that I am an introverted nerd who is uncomfortable and awkward enough speaking my first language in a group of strangers let alone a language that I am still trying to learn.

Given my experiences attempting Spanish, particularly since leaving Miami, I find all of Lahiri's methods inspired and brave. She moved to Italy to help herself learn Italian after she had tutoring and already knew two other languages. That's some dedication. I also love her stories about living in Italy and the comments she got. I was more like her husband, getting confused for locals all the time, but I witnessed plenty of interactions like she talks about when out with friends. Of course, I'm terrible with language and added this other awkward layer to the situation because I looked like a local but couldn't speak it and many of my more Caucasian or non-Hispanic friends stood out like a sore thumb but spoke beautiful Italian. It happens in Miami too with some fluent friends. It's always fairly entertaining, especially with my father who is blond with blue eyes and very fair skin. People will be speaking Spanish around him like he's not even there and sometimes talking about him and he'll smile and ask a question in poorly accented but good Spanish and everyone freezes.

Getting back to Lahiri, the book is quite short though. I listened to the audiobook which is almost 7 hours but is read in both English and Italian. The content ends up being about half that, and you could listen to both languages but I didn't. I also loved her note that she originally wrote the book in Italian and specifically did not do the translation into English on her own. I can't get over that she wrote it in Italian in the first place.

This is a great book about Italian and language and obsession. I loved every minuted of listening to it and plan to employ some of her strategies. show less

I read this (earlier) book, in its English translation, out of curiosity after finishing the author's latest work, a novella that she wrote in Italian and then translated into English. In this set of essays she discusses her experiences with learning the Italian language, and she writes a bit about living in Rome for a temporary period. She focuses within herself and emphasizes reading and writing Italian rather than speaking it. As she explains, writing is a solitary activity which provides her with an opportunity for self reflection; that is evident as she ruminates on how her writing process, and perhaps even aspects of her personality, have changed since learning a new language. Her interior monologues describe her feelings of show more imperfection and inadequacy around learning Italian--although she wrote this book originally in Italian, so I wonder how limited her talent really is!

I would have liked to read more about the author's experiences with speaking Italian. While there are numerous quotes from Italian writers, there is almost nothing here about Italian people speaking their own language. The author seems to regard learning Italian as a personal intellectual challenge more than a way to connect with Italians (or perhaps that is a subject for her next book?). Her focus on the personal, and the interior, is occasionally frustrating. For example, in one of the few essays about speaking Italian, she describes a "wall," determined by her physical appearance as a South Asian woman, that leads native Italian speakers to discount her fluency in and passion for the language. I wish she would call out these Italians on their racism and sexism (they assume her husband, a White presenting man, knows more Italian than she does), but she seems to have internalized the problem. I also wanted the author to acknowledge her own privilege; she is already an accomplished writer in English and does not "need" to learn a new language. What about immigrants to Italy, including Bangladeshis who speak the same language she does (as do I), who do not have the luxury of a fallback career and homeland if native Italians reject them? The author makes no mention of these individuals, for whom language is a survival skill, not an intellectual exercise.

Recommended for all readers, especially adults who are trying to learn a new language. show less

I’ve read Lahiri’s The Lowland, Namesake, and Interpreter of Maladies. In Other Words is her memoir of choosing to inhabit the Italian language, leaving both English and Bengali behind.

Often an author describes a particular experience, and the reader says, “Oh! That’s me!” Even though it would appear they have never had an experience remotely like the one described. For me, this book describes the emotions of cross-cultural identities and boundary-crossing in relationships. It describes the struggle toward something extremely difficult rather than resting in the security of where mastery has been achieved.

Time and space are collapsed today. We can barely evade constant connection and presence. Lahiri writes of languages as show more places where distances still exist. There are no shortcuts from one language to another, and few can truly make the journey. There is no true knowing or belonging without common language.

She is an American who grew up with English and Bengali as her mother tongues. She fell in love with Italian on a visit to Florence in 1994, and writes:

… What I hear, in the shops, in the restaurants, arouses an instantaneous, intense, paradoxical reaction. It’s as if Italian were already inside me and, at the same time, completely external. It doesn’t seem like a foreign language, although I know it is. It seems strangely familiar. I recognized something, in spite of the fact that I understand almost nothing.

What do I recognize? It’s beautiful, certainly, but beauty doesn’t enter into it. It seems like a language with which I have to have a relationship. It’s like a person met one day by chance, with whom I immediately feel a connection, of whom I feel fond. As if I had known it for years, even though there is still everything to discover. I would be unsatisfied, incomplete, if I didn’t learn it. …

Lahiri describes her journey into Italian. From “exile” in her home in the U.S. to moving her family to Italy for total immersion. From sharing space with her other languages to complete commitment to Italian only.

She writes only in Italian now. This book has Italian on the right side, translated into English on the left by Ann Goldstein. Lahiri did not translate for herself, as to do so would drag her back to where she no longer wanted to be. It would sap creativity from her new ventures – her discoveries and struggle – by an overlay of her English mastery. She would too naturally bring her former ways of saying.

I like her thoughts about not translating backwards to a former way of being. It confines, allowing prior ways to conquer the present.

I appreciate hearing her experience of intentionally becoming a novice after achieving status, proficiency, and authority.

I like her thoughts on a passionate devotion to something “meaningless,” never validated or allowed. But go there anyway. show less

I love Jhumpa Lahiri. I love her beautiful storytelling and her ability to turn everyday moments into quiet monuments. This book is different, and I knew it would be, but I had mixed feelings reading it, and mid-book, I didn't know if I wanted to keep reading. What I find completely fascinating and incredible is how astutely Lahiri predicted my exact reaction to this memoir. She knew that I'd be annoyed that she was pursuing something that might change her writing for good. She knew the depth of her readers' feeling of proprietorship over her writing. I spent about half this book being very concerned that Lahiri was basically announcing that she'd never write a book in English again (again, shame on me), but then came a point where she show more addressed her struggle to feel a sense of belonging, both culturally and linguistically. She wrote of the feelings her readers have projected on her (readers' expectations cannot be easy to contend with, as a writer/artist), and it began to dawn on me how important this book is for Lahiri and for her oeuvre. I began to see how generous it is of her to allow us into her vulnerable attempt to delve into a language she chose for herself, and the trials and travails that followed. And not only that... but to publish this book as she did: showing the Italian she wrote it in on one page, and on the facing page, the English translation... amazing! Everything out there for all to read. Jhumpa Lahiri is no fool, and beyond that, she's one of the most courageous authors out there. She's brilliant and true to her art, and more importantly, she's true to herself. I'm grateful she wrote this book. show less

Jhumpa Lahiri has always felt a little detached from her "native" languages, thanks to being raised speaking Bengali with her immigrant parents, and speaking English in the rest of her daily life in the US. She never felt as if she fully had a place in either. And from there, she found a love for the Italian language and decided to do something totally crazy - immerse herself in it. She read exclusively in Italian to prep herself for a (temporary) move to Italy, and started writing exclusively in it as well.

The book talks about her journey in learning Italian, her thoughts about her own sense of displacement, her struggles with fame that came from winning the Pulitzer. The book also contains a couple of stories she wrote in Italian. show more The English edition features the Italian and English versions of the book on facing pages, which is an interesting choice, and fortuitous for me because it meant it was a rare case where I was able to find a book in Italian in the US. :) I enjoyed most of the book, although I think that her sense of searching comes through clearly and because it doesn't seem like something she has resolved, the book doesn't end with any sort of conclusion either. It's the log of an experiment, perhaps an ongoing one. But wow, could I relate to a lot of her thoughts on learning a language and the importance of abandoning the feeling of safety to just throw yourself into it. show less

I wanted the reading experience to be as authentic as possible, so I stumbled through the Italian. I read it out loud, slowly, carefully sounding out the syllables, but my mouth kept forming the words with English phonetics, French sounds, wanting to keep to the languages I knew. Every time I came across a familiar-looking word - "leggere", "curiosa" - my jaw muscles relaxed. It also helped that English was just across the binding. I glanced at it after every line. It was like the edge of the pool, something safe, like the shore of Lahiri's pond.

This struggle to sound out foreign letters left me astounded at Lahiri's perseverance. It must have been a Herculean effort, to completely cut out something that she knew she knew, to embrace show more something that she knew she would never know completely. And yet, despite of her imperfection, because of her imperfection, I could feel the lightness of her words, the loveliness of her metaphors.

I have read reviews where readers found this book self-indulgent. Perhaps it is. But one could argue that all books are self-indulgent, to satisfy a whim of the author. I found In Other Words wonderfully relatable. Living on the margins myself, I know what it feels like to feel exiled, to feel suspended, and yet I never knew how to express these feelings in words. Lahiri wrote them out for me. For this, I feel grateful. show less

I have really enjoyed Jhumpa Lahiri's other books, so was very intrigued when this came out. She herself describes it as a "travel book, more interior . . . than geographic" (211) And while I have loved her fiction, she sees this as having the same themes: "identity, alienation, belonging. But the wrapping, the contents, the body and soul are transfigured." Here she is exploring in a very intelligent, reflective way her relationship with language, specifically the Italian she has challenged herself to learn as an adult. She has been extremely thorough in her exploration: taking classes, working with private tutors, moving to Rome to be immersed, and rigorous self-study. Lahiri set herself the goal of being fluent enough to write in show more Italian and this book is the culmination. It actually appears in both Italian (left side) and English (right side -- which was translated by someone else). Using metaphors of swimming, clothing, metamorphosis, she explores the challenges of trying to become an author (authoritative) in a second language. It is admirable for her study alone -- to undertake such a feat as an adult without the necessity of immigration, but also for her reflection on how language shapes life and the complications of cultural heritage and assumptions and the contradictory nature of straddling 2 identities at once. Her east Indian roots, so familiar to her fiction are also incorporated with her fluency in Bengali completing a self-described triangle of literacy. To be so intelligent! This is an inspiring endeavor that succeeds nicely. show less