A theme that clearly comes across in many recent novels by first-generation immigrants to the United States-especially from Asian countries-is the alienation they feel in their new home. Shawn Wong, for example, writes in Homebase about Rainsford Chan who longs to be recognized as American, not as Chinese. A similar topic is found when reading real-life blogs on the web. A large number of immigrants, or their children, have few or no ties left with their birthplace, but have yet to find a "home" in the true sense of the word in America. A study in "The International Journal of Social Psychiatry" published in 2006, for example, finds that "Immigrant adolescents reported higher psychological distress, lower self-esteem and higher alcohol consumption than non-immigrant adolescents" (Slonim-Nevo et. al). Such research supports the strongly favored view of immigration as a potentially distress-provoking experience. As a Time Magazine special concluded: .

             Caught between cultures, the children of immigrants often face stark choices between traditional and modern values. Usually, a fragile balance is achieved. But in the most wrenching cases, the scales can tip wildly, and sometimes violently.

             It is not surprising, then, that Jhumpa Lahiri's first novel, Namesake, deals with this subject of alienation and uncertainty as well, since she, too, feels "culturally displaced." Although born in the U.S., Lahiri says in a web interview that she "inherited a sense of exile from my parents." As the title of the book implies, Namesake is the story of Gogol's finding the meaning behind his name and a satisfying place in his two separate worlds of India and America. Beyond this, however, the novel is about the search that people from many different cultures and backgrounds undergo when leaving their roots behind.

             Although Gogol is born in Cambridge, Masschusetts, his parents, as those of Jhumpa Lahiri, had a feeling of exile despite the fact they left Calcutta on their own volition.