Francesco Pacifico in Paris Review:
LAHIRI
In my life in English, so to speak, there’s a sense that if I don’t hit a certain benchmark, I’ve failed. That’s the judgment I’ve felt from American culture from the start—the expectation to assimilate, and then, when I became a writer, to “represent” the Indian American experience, the immigrant experience. Then there’s the eternal, original judgment—of my mother, my parents, their immigrant community, their many friends with advanced degrees. Theirs was a language of comparison and competition, everyone striving to establish themselves and get ahead. And there’s the overhanging judgment, of the world my parents left behind in Kolkata. All of which I internalized.
INTERVIEWER
It’s interesting—in your books in English, the family is a totalizing force, but you’ve put solitary women at the center of your Italian books.
LAHIRI
Thank you, Dr. Pacifico—maybe that’s because it’s only in Italian that I feel I’m at the center of myself.
More here.