There’s a short-piece (but impressive as a 2-page spread in the mag) about Jhumpa Lahiri and her new book in Time this week.

Lahiri is one of my favorite authors. I loved her pulitzer winning Interpreter of Maladies (though my mom liked it even more). The Namesake was almost a spiritual experience as much as it was an exercise in reading a book. I remember reading it straight through the night on the day it arrived in the mail. I was tired the next day at work, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the book. The newest addition, Unaccustomed Earth, was similarly devoured over the course of a couple of days.

Lahiri, for me, is one of those rare things. Her words have a more profound impact than the mere poetic balance of the words. When I first read her writing, I literally cringed. There’s something special in seeing yourself in someone else’s words. Reading Lahiri for the first time was almost like having a conversation with someone who told me that their experience growing up was similar to my own. It was identification. She talks about being pulled in different directions. The pressure of adhering to the old world that our parents come from, while facing the internal torture of wanting to blend in with the new world. You end up feeling inadequate in both. take today at a conference i stopped by: i commiserated with 2 other guys about how to answer the “where are you from” question.you answer, New Jersey (or Canada in the case of my friend), and the questioner looks perturbed and disappointed. and yet, for us, there is no answer that feels more true. and so when the question is presented in the future there’s a moments hesitation. and convoluted answers such as “ethnically from…” or “my family is…”. this is one of the many experiences that the ‘bridges’ between generations are bound together by. And Lahiri is some of the glue that has helped give the experience credibility, and know that its not because we’re imperfect that this happens to us, but because we are living through a larger, collective experience.

Lahiri’s stories are simple. They’re the immigrant’s story. And the story of the children of immigrants, caught between worlds. The Time article remarks at how astounding it is that her most recent book opened the charts as a #1 bestseller. Most bestsellers are written in a frenetic, sensational, or even a provocative manner. Yet, Lahiri’s stories are slow, almost dry-aged, with very simple themes. I’m not shocked at the high sales. On the simplest level, she’s developed a rabid fan base in the South-Asian American community (one that grew up with few, if any, prominent members to read about, read with, watch on TV, etc). But more than that, at its core America is a country of immigrants. Why wouldn’t her stories be embraced?