Jhumpa Lahiri is an Indian immigrant from London whose family originated from West Bengal. Lahiri's mother and father were immigrants who traveled to America when Jhumpa was just a little girl. They lived in a town in Rhode Island called Kingston. Literature was in her family since she was a little girl with her father being a librarian at the university of Rhode Island. Jhumpa attended school in Rhode Island school until college. Followed up her education at Boston University where she received an M.A. in English, M.F.A. in Creative Writing, M.A. in Comparative Literature, and a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies. One of Jhumpa first short story collections was called Interpreter of Maladies in 1999 followed by a novel called The Namesake written in 2003. She continued on writing a few years, which led to Unaccustomed Earth written in 2008, which was seen, on the New York Times best selling list. In This Short story collection, one piece of writing that stood out to me and that I enjoyed reading was called Only Goodness. Jhumpa Lahiri background coming from an India family influenced her writings by including characters who are from India dealing with similar problems such as a 2nd generation immigrants living in the united states and difficulties and dilemmas that come from being born in another country. .
Nearly 1.9 million Indian immigrants lived in the United States in the 1990's and 2000's. This represented the third-largest immigrant group by country, behind Mexico and China. It was also stated that Indians who came to America were greatly educated and had strong English language skills. Jhumpa was part of this population. At a young age in Rhode Island she followed her fathers footsteps and became a librarian. She states in an interview "I didn't do it just because that's what my father was doing, I did it because it was something that inside I wanted to do". Jhumpa grew up in a home full of books.