The Namesake

[luv_serendipity]

"For being a foreigner, Ashima is beginning to realize, is sort of lifelong pregnancy - a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling of sorts. It is an ongoing responsibility, a parenthesis in what once had been an ordinary life, only to discover that the previous life has vanished, replaced by something more complicated and demanding. Like pregnancy, being a foreigner, Ashima believes is something that elicits the same curiosity from strangers, the same combination of pity and respect."
----- Jhumpa Lahiri, "The Namesake"