Bahmanpour

Bahmanpour’s  “Female subjects and negotiating identities in Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies” analyses females culture identity conflicts in the book Interpreter of Maladies. The author defines three ways of assimilating or dealing with other cultures then compares them to four short stories in Interpreter of Maladies where females take the protagonist role. The three approaches of viewing one’s own assimilation to another culture are: self and other, hybridity, and liminality. The author then analyses each of the short stories and compares them to each of these views. Mrs. Sen’s who is a first generation immigrant who looks after a little boy. She struggles with adapting to American society and continues to withhold her traditions, which is more like the liminality view. In This Blessed House the female in the story, as a second generation immigrant, does not struggle with assimilating to the American culture. This is shown in the story when she finds Christian icons and chooses to display them in her house even though she is Hindu. The Treatment of Bibi Haldar on the other hand takes place in India where the protagonist struggles to fit in to her own culture. Sexy is a story about an American woman in the United States who has an affair with an Indian man and is inclined to know more about the culture. These women all lead lives which deal with other cultures and whether they try to assimilate or keep their own culture it still, at times, presents a conflict to them.