This paper analyzes how Jhumpa Lahiri’s In Other Words tends to displace Italy both linguistically and spatially, through the use of abstract descriptions of its spaces. By de-linking the experience of Italy from its spaces, Lahiri portrays a multicultural country, in which borders are shaped by linguistic, raced, gendered lines rather than by geography. Her writing is powerful as it describes and intimate and introspective experience as a racialized foreigner, however her experience of Italy is divorced from a wider social context. Because of this reason, In Other Words shares some common themes, and equally important differences, with the description of Italy – and the experiences of belonging and marginalization that are associated with this space – which can be found in the works by both nonwhite migrant writers who write in Italian and foreign travelers, who chronicle their aesthetic experience of Italy.