Abstract: Jhumpa Lahiri, the Indian American writer, presents a new understanding of home in her representative work, The Namesake, that is, home is not an unchanging abstract concept with its fixed inner core, but a concrete practice that could be incessantly generated and constructed. Moreover, the sense of belonging pertaining to home may be achieved in performativity. On the one hand, by performing cultural customs, Indian American immigrants try to maintain their connection with the traditional culture or assimilate themselves into the new culture so as to gain a sense of belonging, but on the other hand they break up the traditional mode of home and put home in a process of perpetual motion and construction. The home depicted by Lahiri does not take root in one place, but moves between different places instead. A new home can absorb the nutrition from the old one, but it would reach out into the new soil for its unremitting extension. Therefore, Lahiri rejects the essentialist vision of home. What she welcomes, instead, is an open home.

Key words: Lahiri, The Namesake, home, performativity, construction