Jhumpa Lahiri - "Once in a Lifetime"

Jhumpa Lahiri's "Once in a Liftime" is about a young girl telling her perspective of  meeting of cultures, of two families (one hers and one mine) that had been close but had been separated by a new culture for my parents, a culture they developed when we lived in Bombay, a culture more American than those that had lived in America.

Of course, the most interesting part of this story is the interesting use of the first- and second-person perspective to tell the tale. This does a couple things. First of all, it helps the reader to feel even more familiar with the culture than most of the readers would be. It stops the reader from feeling alienated by Indian culture in that way. It also creates a sense of nostalgia in the reader, despite the fact that the plotline of this story clearly did not happen to the any member of the audience. It also makes the loss of "my" mother at the end of the piece more poignant because it makes one put his/her mother in there in place of the woman that's in there.

Another interesting aspect of this piece is the time skips that begin and end the story. Both time skips alienate the two families, and both times, neither of them ever seem to reconcile besides the young narrator of the story. In fact, I would argue that by the end, the only tie between the two families is the tie the narrator feels for "my" family, and as I am me, a possible sense of attachment I have for the narrator and/or her family. It's a tie that can only been seen in the younger generation, as the parents are too distant from each other to be repaired.

The "you and I" narration of this story is something that I, as a writer, would love to attempt one time. It's a type of narration that seems to be expressly forbidden, but at the same time, expressly poignant in  way that no other perspective can be. I would like to attempt to achieve that balance that allows for this poignancy.