The Internal Cultures Of Diaspora, By Bharati Mukherjee

Born in 1940 and raised in Calcutta, India, Bharati Mukherjee immigrated to the United States in 1961 and earned an M.F.A. and a Ph.D. in literature. Mukherjee is the author of several novels, including Tiger's Daughter (1972) and Jasmine (1989), and short story collections, such as The Middleman and Other Stories (1988). She teaches literature and fiction writing at the University of California, Berkeley.

Diaspora is the movement, migration, or scattering of people away from an established or ancestral home land or in this case a scattered population whose origin lies within a smaller geographic location. The poem “Diaspora” by Chelsea Dingman ventures through the journey of a Ukrainian girl leaving her country and the in the pride she receives from that journey and her heritage. The poem focuses around the hardships that are included in taking this journey and how she lose so much, the feelings of despair and weakness is all she has left.

In this paper I will begin by defining personal culture and national culture. After, I will then elaborate my own personal and national culture. I will continue to talk about the subject with the person that I have chosen for my cultural group, my mother, and I will identify her personal and national culture. Lastly, I will talk about my own personality and how it has a connection with my own natural culture; knowing this is important, it lets us know who we are, and how we act with people who are from different cultures.

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.

Exodus is defined as a mass migration,

The scattering a Jews beyond Israel has been a reoccurring pattern of events in history. Essential Jewish practice and creation of cultural identity has formed far from Jerusalem, despite the Torah’s vital theme of longing for the Promise Land. The idea that Jews are outsiders is ingrained in Jewish culture and identity Jerusalem faces being exiled too because it is “merely an extension of Western colonialism,” from its neighboring countries. However, today Jews are starting to close the chapter in history of exile and statelessness by returning to the Promise Land but this doesn’t mean that the Diaspora is coming to an end. Jewish history has continuous movement that caused great triumph and sadness. The issue that Jews have faced for so long is not having a home, power, and a sense of belonging because of the continuous exiling and persecution they face, at home and away, while still trying to create an identity for themselves.

At its most fundamental, diaspora focuses on the physical movement of people. However, comprehensive scholarship elevates “diaspora” beyond

No diasporic community manifests all of these characteristics or shares with the same intensity an identity with its scattered ancestral kin. In many respects, diasporas are not actual but imaginary and symbolic communities and political constructs; it is we who often call them into being.” (Palmer)

Mukherjee goes into detail how she and her sister were alike when they left India together, and how different they live their lives in America. Mukherjee sister Mira stayed more traditional by marrying an India and holding onto her Indian citizenship in hopes of going back home after retirement. Mukherjee marries an American and adapted

Bharati Mukherjee discus’s the loss of cultural identity while being a visible minority by using the setting, characters and the plot of her short story “Hindus”. The author uses the plot for the main character to meet new people and have new experiences that leads to the ending of her better understanding herself. The characters the main character meets along the way in the short story written by Mukerjee are very important in the end in finding her identity. She also uses the setting to show the differences of culture and living standards of those living in India versus living in the Americas. The author used the setting, characters and the plot to describe and demonstrate the cultural and identity loss that may happen when one moves away from their country and their

The Hebrew Diaspora was caused by different factors depending on the group exiling the Hebrews. In other words, the reason for dispersing the Hebrews depended on the context of time, circumstance, and those carrying out the exile. The Assyrians and Babylonians dispersed the Hebrew community in the early sixth century

In simple terms, the Diaspora as a concept, describes groups of people who currently live or reside outside the original homelands. We will approach the Diaspora from the lenses of migration; that the migration of people through out of the African continent has different points of origin, different patterns and results in different identity formations. Yet, all of these patterns of dispersion and germination/ assimilation represent formations of the Diaspora. My paper will focus on the complexities of the question of whether or not Africans in the Diaspora should return to Africa. This will be focused through the lenses of the different phases in the Diaspora.

In the article “Diasporas”, historian and anthropologist James Clifford explores the issues that can arise when trying to concretely define diaspora, a “traveling term, in changing global conditions”. Clifford explains, the concept of diaspora was used in the study of Jewish and later Greek and Armenian displaced groups. However, since the 1950s it has been commonly evoked in reference to African forced migration and is now used to describe a variety of peoples and relocation experiences. In addition to ‘diaspora’, other terms are also being used quite heavily in discussions of the movement of people, including “border”, and Clifford explores the differences and similarities between people living in a state of “border” versus a state of diaspora while both suggest connections and “multilocalities” of people “borders” implies a politically and geographically defined line, where as a diaspora connotates a further distance of separation, and possibly a sense of exile. Clifford discuses these connections and

As a young American, and a very critical one at that, I believe that America is on a path to chaos. There may have been or may be a chance at some point in America’s long timeline where unity through diversity could be achieved in reality- that’s the principal this county was founded on after all- but the minds and hearts of the American people have never really been open to the idea. There is so much hatred and fear for people of other cultures in America that I honestly do not believe that America as a nation can ever become truly socially unified. Our citizens and government like to claim that we are a country where people of all kinds and cultures can come and be prosperous; live as they please, do as they please, be who they please, but from what I have seen in my short 19 years as an American I do not believe that to be entirely true.

Bharati Mukherjee is one of the accomplished diasporic writers. Her writing focuses mainly on women’s suppression, struggle to overcome the problems and attempt to attain identification. Bharati Mukherjee also depicts the cultural conflicts between the East and the West. When a person enters into a new culture from the old one, the conflict arises between the two cultures in the alien land. This paper explores how the female character, Jasmine is portrayed as protagonist in Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine. Bharati Mukherjee portrays Indian woman as protagonist in all her novels and the character takes brave decision to emigrate which is the first major step of heroism. The character is portrayed with the capable of facing adventures and creates own happiness and identity, unyielding by conventionality. In Jasmine (1989),