Cultural Predeterminism: The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
Review by Elena Negron
As a young boy Gogol doesn’t mind his name.
It is impossible to remove Lahiri’s connection to identity, language, and travel when looking at this book. Her writing touches on the life of an immigrant family— new places, new things, familial frustrations, and growth. So many things that make people human, Lahiri captures into words. Gogol grounds the book, but it begins just before his birth when he was still a blank slate of possibilities. Or perhaps he wasn’t a blank slate even then, because of where he was being born and who his parents were. Gogol explores this in a way as he grows up and the book continues.
Praise
Lahiri’s sense of place is nearly otherwordly. Rarely is there a moment in which the reader feels lost or disconnected from the scene. As a person with a multi-cultural background, the scenes of Gogol and his family returning to India struck me so hard. They felt so incredibly real. The moments in Gogol’s platonic, romantic, and familial relationships were oftentimes raw, unafraid to dig into what a relationship could be, and what it shouldn’t be, and the ways it can be everything in between that. We read this in my Novel Writing Workshop and had nothing but wonderful things to say about it.
An Argument for the Predetermined
I am not South Asian. I am Latina with a parent born and raised in Puerto Rico, and thus take this in with that understanding. In a recent conversation with a friend from Kerala, she disclosed that a major criticism of the book (which she disagrees with) is the way that it flattens the immigrant narrative. However, to claim that there is one, “The”, immigrant narrative, is a flattening agent all on its own. The Ganguli family is complex, a family full of people who are different and see the world differently but still are tied together, and Lahiri exposes that without hesitation. She refuses to shy away from Gogol’s praise and criticisms of all countries, all people. Beyond that, one of Lahiri’s key points is in the name: from Gogol to Nikhil, Gogol attempts to create his own place. I think it’s less about the immigrant narrative, and more about the predestination of life before one is even born. Lahiri asks the question: are we predestined by who we come from, where we come from, like something as simple as a name? Gogol cannot shake his family name, the name given to him as a placeholder before becoming permanent. Try as he might to embody Nikhil, he ends the story as he began it: Gogol. The immigration story here is so clearly important, but it seems to be used as foregrounding Lahiri’s final point. You can’t run away from your identity, especially not one that has been gifted to you from before birth—and I choose “gifted” purposefully. I think Lahiri argues that Gogol’s identity is to be both celebrated and understood as complex but ultimately, identity is to be cherished because it has influenced who he ultimately becomes.
Final Thoughts
This book feels universal. I stopped going by my family name in college- I went from Leni to Elena because it felt more adult, and that decision has never felt more seen or validated than by Gogol in this book. I believe that most people can find their own moment in this book. Its richness is palpable and it deserved the Pulitzer Prize. I want to acknowledge the end— at first, it felt abrupt and I felt somewhat unhappy with it. However, when considering the ending as a closure, everything makes sense. Gogol has somewhat accepted the predetermined life that his parents have caused him.
