It’s okay if you haven’t heard of Jhumpa Lahiri. And it’s okay if you haven’t heard of the books The Namesake and Interpreter of Maladies.
But.
It’s not okay if you are the master of ceremonies at the Fort Greene Park Summer Literary Festival where Lahiri is the main attraction and you say, “And our next reader is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Interpreter of Maladies and…and…The Nama-saki?”
“Namesake” pronounced Japanese-style? What?!
Name. Sake. A compound word. Go ahead, girl, read “motorcycle.” If it sounds like another place where the geishas once roamed, you are wrong again.
Good lord. Another sign of a failing public education system? I don’t want to think so. Instead, I’ll go with theory two: That Justin Timberlake has brought both sexy and stupid back.
Or theory three: That stupid ain’t never left.
