| Résumé: | Jhumpa Lahiri, an American writer with South Asian origin, has continued
writing about immigrant families and their attempt to construct home in her
latest novel The Lowland shortlisted for 2013 Man Booker Prize. Lahiri can
be uniquely categorized among the immigrant writers dealing with “imaginary
homeland.” In this dissertation, I specifically focus on how Lahiri extends the
concept of “home” by showing her main character trying to create his
“imaginary homeland” in America, while his beloved brother in India is
fighting to reconstruct their homeland by joining Naxalite Movement ended
up being executed, while the parents are forced to witness the scene. The
concept of “Home” used in this dissertation is discussed through the theories
of Rosemary Marangoly George, which is here connected to “Social
Imaginary” or “imagination as social practice” defined by Arjun Appadurai,
connoting that our world shifts as we move from one place to another. The
idea of “ethnoscape” defined by Appadurai will be discussed in this research
in order to show how Lahiri depicts the stability and flow of these characters’
life affected by immigration. Moreover, the notion of family and family
structure transformation for immigrants is under scrutinization in this
research work exploring the ways in which Lahiri attempts to depict
immigration changing the structures of the families, which is resulted from
the global movement of people.
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