Jhumpa Lahiri

I still find it astonishing that I went to the same high school as this Pulitzer-prize winner. She was four years ahead of me, so I never interacted with her, never knew her. Nonetheless, through her writing, I feel she and I shared a common experience -- growing up in same town in Rhode Island. We were both non-whites brought in a predominantly white area -- though, for better or for worse, she had a non-white family. But, I suppose what always shocks me the most about her writing are the times when she reminds me of what it was like to grow up in that rural area -- not the experience of being regarded as Other, but rather the experience of just being a child growing up in rural Rhode Island.

From her recent book of short stories, I experienced this again reading "Nobody's Business:"

"... he thought of the ice cream his mother always ordered at Newport Creamery when his family went on Sunday nights for hamburgers."

Newport Creameries in New England are not uncommon -- but I know which one she is talking about, the one I used to go to to hang out with my friends when I was in high school. Reading that sentence I instantly could picture the inside of that place and remember the ice cream they served there. It wasn't particularly good. Furthermore, I remember going there and seeing my math teacher (and was probably Jhumpa Lahiri's math teacher), Mrs. Fisher, eating there as she did every night since her husband died and being unable to look at her because it pained me to see her as a real, lonely person.

Oof. Hadn't thought of that in years.