Analysis Of Bharati Mukherjee

In her essay “My Two Lives,” Jhumpa Lahiri, an Indian American, explains the balance between the identities of the two countries inside her heart, as well as her psychological struggle between her bicultural identities. She describes herself as an Indian-American because she moved with her family from India to the United States when she was very young. However, confused with her identity through her growth, she feels that she doesn’t belong to either of the two countries because of its completely different cultures. When she is at home, she deals with her parents in an Indian way, which is strange compared to the American way that she come across outside. She says that she has a distinctive identity in spite of her Indian appearance

Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth is comprised of eight short stories about different Indian families’ struggles in America, many of them going through the immigrant experience. The conflicts are with friends and family, and also with themselves, as each of them attempt to find their own identity along with fitting in with the rest of society. One of the causes of these struggles that because the families in the stories are mixed in terms of generation. Many of the adults in the stories were first generation immigrants from India, while many of the children were raised in the United States, which is the second generation. This led to blending of culture and at the same time, clashes between the immigrant mentality of living and the American mentality of living. In Unaccustomed Earth, Lahiri demonstrates to the reader the important influence of environment, specifically culture and how it impacts parental teachings, on the personality and development of an individuals’ identity, and how the actions and development of characters can affect one’s family and friends; the impact of environment and culture is shown especially by the characters and stories “Hell-Heaven” and “Hema and Kaushik”.

This book depicts the national and cultural status of the immigrant mother, who is able to preserve the traditions of her Indian heritage that connect her to her homeland. Ensuring a successful future for her American-born children is coordinated with the privilege of being an American citizen. Ashima yearns for her homeland and her family that she left behind when

Even so, Mukherjee was “opting for fluidity, self-invention, blue jeans, and Tshirts, and renouncing 3,000 years of cate-observant, ‘pure culture’ marriage in the Mukherjee family” (273). She embraces the American culture because she acquires conformity from it. Mukherjee’s love for America makes her more susceptible to adjust into America to the point where she does not even follow her own Indian tradition. This changes her identity negatively because the more she embraces the American lifestyle, the more she surrenders her Indian heritage. If she did allow herself to gain citizenship while maintaining her Indian culture, perhaps her identity would not be jeopardized, however it is. Mukherjee loses her identity as a traditional Indian since chose the American lifestyle over her own, and hence this reveals the trauma of self-transformation that results from sacrificing one’s identity.

Mukherjee varies her sentence lengths to show a stark contrast between her and her sister’s immigrant experiences. For example, she uses the sentence, “I am moved that thousands of long-term residents are finally taking the oath of citizenship. She is not.” Mukherjee’s longer first sentence elicits emotion from the audience hoping to receive empathy early in the essay. While the short terse statement that follows intentionally causes the readers to spark an interest in her sister, Mira, wondering why her views are so different from Mukherjee’s. The use of such variation prepares the readers for the rest of the contrasts that will follow throughout the essay. Mukherjee further shows the differentiation of the siblings when she claims, “America spoke to me-I married it-I embraced the demotion from expatriate aristocrat to immigrant nobody, surrendering those thousands of years of ‘pure culture,’ the saris, the delightfully accented English. She retained them all.” The different sentence lengths

The Mukherjee sisters contrast in the way they live. For example, Mira wedded an Indian student and soon after developed her green card, stress free. While Bharati didn’t, due to her husband’s North Dakota

She explains her thesis by stating “Others who write stories of migration often talk of arrival at a new place as a loss of communal memory and the erosion of an original culture. I want to talk of arrival as a gain,” (360). The key points of the text include Mukherjee describing her transition between Calcutta and the United States, and what it means to be and American and how culture influences that aspect. The information in the text is significant; the people of America are a part of a melting pot, sometimes it is hard for them to find the distinction between American culture and their own. The information in Mukherjee’s story is clear and specific, unbiased, and is relevant to the purpose of the story. I believe Mukherjee has achieved her purpose of informing her audience about cultural differences; she presents certain strengths and weaknesses within the text.

A person’s heritage and cultural identity may be lost when moving to a new country where the culture is different and other cultures are not easily accepted. In the short story “Hindus”, Bharati Mukherjee uses setting, characters and the plot to discuss what it is like to lose your cultural identity while being a visible minority in America. Mukherjee uses the plot to describe the events that take place in the main characters life that lead her to realize how different the culture and life is in the America’s. She also uses the characters as a way of demonstrating how moving away from one’s culture and heritage can change a person’s perspective and ways of thinking. Mukerjee also uses setting in her story to identity the physical differences in culture between living in India and America. Alike the setting and characters, the plot helps describe the loss of culture with a sequence of events.

Mukherjee uses contrasting diction to emphasize the difference of experiences the sisters had on immigration and the sacrifices they had along the way when faced with the American culture. For example, Mukherjee’s use of “maintain” and “self-invention” are contradictory to each other, but in the context “maintain” refers to her sister Mira and “self-invention” is directed to Mukherjee herself. In Mira’s case, she is very attached to her Indian culture and stresses about not letting the American culture take that away from her. The author’s purpose was to highlight the tenacious mentality Mira has on her culture. In contrast, Mukherjee's use of “self-invention” regards to her loosening her strict hold of Indian culture; the exact opposite

Bharati, on the other hand, came to the United States and felt the need to try and fit in with the American culture. Besides marrying a man of her father’s choice or inside of her Indian culture, she ends up getting married to an American-Canadian man. She lived with her husband in his homeland, Canada, for 20 years. Bharati says “I was prepared for (and even welcomed) the emotional strain that came with marrying outside my ethnic community.” (Mukherjee 5). Bharati opened up more to the American culture and its beliefs. She believes being married to an American and living in America that she should try and adapt to the new cultural setting. Has she says in the story, “I need to feel like a

Bharati is welcoming of her new environment in America and as a result, is consumed in the environment and society, accepting that her cultural identity will change and that her former culture’s influences will remain static. “I am an American citizen and she is not. I am moved that thousands of long-term residents are finally taking the oath of citizenship. She is not” (Mukherjee 70). This reveals Bharti’s acceptance of American culture, whereas her sister, Mira refuses to accept American culture into her life.

Mukherjee personifies America to show that being American isn’t simply a nationality, but is also a relationship formed with its cultures and ideals. When Mira tells Bharati she won’t become a citizen, she defends her stance, saying “ If America wants to play the manipulative game, I’ll play it to” (269). After hearing this, Bharati describes Mira’s relationship with America as a “loveless marriage” (269). Mukherjee personifies America in this context to show the complexity of an immigrant’s bond with America, often being complicated and difficult, just like a relationship between people. The use of personification also appeals to the audience’s emotions, by causing them to consider times they’ve felt mistreated in a relationship. This lets them relate to the feeling that the sisters have with their situations. Earlier in the essay, Mukherjee states “America spoke to me - I married it “ (269).

In the essay, “American Dreamer” by Bharati Mukherjee, Mukherjee writes about the problems of immigrants nowadays. Because of her families religious tradition, Mukherjee is confined by her permanent identity in her own culture, “a Hindu Indian’s last name announced his or her forefathers’ caste and place of origin…a Mukherjee could only be Brahmin from Bengal…my identity was viscerally connected with ancestral soil and genealogy” (Mukherjee 1). From her attitude towards her identity, Mukherjee does not want to confine by the Hindu tradition. She is rebellious against her own culture even though she understands Hindu tradition forbids any assimilation with any other culture. After her marriage with an American of Canadian origin, she

The immigrant experience affects families in a unique manner wherein ethnicity, and therefore, identity becomes something continuously negotiated. Jhumpa Lahiri’s contemporary novel, “The Namesake,” beautifully illustrates the complexities of generational culture clashes and the process of self-individualization over the course of this experience. Lahiri challenges the often-one-dimensional approach to ethnic identity by allowing readers an intimate and omnipresent look into the internal struggles of the Gangulis, a first-and-second-generation Bengali family, following their relocation to America. The novel incorporates a heavy presence of reading, and the abundant representation of books and documents throughout it are vital to its

Through her tasteful selection of contemporary Indian influenced prose pieces, Jhumpa Lahiri traces the unique journey of Indian families established in America. Focusing on the intergenerational aspect of traditional households, Lahiri conveys the emotional rollercoaster that accompanies a person who is branded as a foreigner. In America, there exists a common misconception that immigrants who arrive in this country fully assimilate or seek to assimilate as time progresses. The category I chose was "The Dot of true Happiness." The dot which signifies the bindi, a traditional red mark worn by Indian people, is the source of true happiness among these immigrants.