Summary

In “Love at First Sight” Jhumpa first goes to Italy in 1994 with her sister. She is studying Renaissance architecture. She realizes she likes the sound of the Italian language. She feels it was familiar even though it is foreign to her and she can't respond to anyone who speaks to her in that language. Although she knows her desire is not practical, it is at this point in her life that Jhumpa first asks permission of the language to begin learning it.

In “Exile” Jhumpa thinks of Dante, Ovid and her mother, three people who were exiled from their languages and inspirations when she considers her own exile from Italian, the language she wants to learn. The feeling of being in exile because of language is familiar to Jhumpa. Her native language is Bengali, a foreign language in America...