Pulitzer-Prize-Winning Author Jhumpa Lahiri Celebrates Translation on Campus (Nov. 2019)

The visit of Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri at Montclair State University on Mon. Nov. 18 was an enriching series of stimulating moments all centered on the topic of translation as both a creative and a political practice. Lahiri’s statement that “Only translations can expand the literary horizon, open doors, and knock down walls” was the starting point for both a workshop and a public conversation; taken together, the two events reached over 400 people. Focused on her recent endeavor, the Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories, which she edited (and in part translated), as a tribute to writers who have lived in more than one language. This is Lahiri’s second visit on campus: she came four years ago, as part of the Inserra Chair cultural programs at MSU.

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In the evening event, Lahiri explained that after learning Italian, living in Italy for a while, and publishing in Italian, she has embraced translation as an activity to rethink herself as a person and a writer at a time in which valuing plurilingualism is more pressing than ever. “Translation is an aesthetic and ethical and political stance,” Lahiri said. “Aesthetic because it’s an art, ethical because it has to do with our common humanity, and political because it is more than one way of understanding reality. It displaces the notion of one solution to anything – which is fascism. Translation completely cancels that out.”

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The “architect” of the one-day visit, Prof. Teresa Fiore (Inserra Chair), envisioned Lahiri’s exchanges with professors, students and administrators throughout the day as the culmination of a multi-year Initiative on translation: “The hope is to see this conversation continue in order to truly value the multi-lingual profile of our campus, and create further opportunities to work across disciplines in Translation from theater to film, literature, medical humanities, accessibility, etc., as part of the internationalization of the curriculum of our institution.” As CHSS Dean Peter Kingstone remarked, “Translation is about communicating meaning across the great divides that separate us whether cultural, gender, geographic or language,” and added that at Montclair State University, “a living breathing experiment of intercultural communications, we are trying to create a shared space. Despite our differences, we hear each other. We share meaning.”

The evening event attracted not just the campus community but also a large number of community members from the regione, thanks to a collaboration with the Montclair Literary Festival and the Watchung Bookstore, an independent entity in town. The signing of the books at the end of the event was a reminder of the love for literature, including foreign literature in translation, that powerful and courageous writers like Jhumpa Lahiri can still inspire at a time in which there is no reason to talk about the crisis of the humanities but just the new forms that the humanities are taking, including through translation.

For more information, see webpage. See also the pictures taken by MSU official photographer, Mike Peters: Photo gallery