Themes Of Bharati Mukherjee

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”.

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

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.

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

That leads to exposure of new cultures because they have been under their parent’s guidance and were raised by their ways, but now they were on their own. The text says, “...two sisters from Calcutta, Mira and Bharati, who lived in the United States for some 35 years..” During those years, they were able to see the diversity of the United States. “When we left India, we were almost identical in appearance and attitude... We dressed alike, in saris; we expressed identical views on politics, social issues, love and marriage in the same Calcutta convent-school accent.”

Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers is a non-fiction book. Boo got to know the people there during the course of three years in India, and she wrote about the daily stresses and problems. The book describes a long story of life, death, and hope. It takes place near an international airport in a Mumbai undercity that is separated from the normal world by the “beautiful forever” wall. Boo describes how every resident of Annawadi in Mumbai is involved in the strife of day-to-day living and how each has plans to improve their situation. Annawadi is a society that subsists on the leftovers and castoffs from the affluent, and a society where corruption runs rampant. Boo has shown us how our lives and the people’s lives in Mumbai are different.

Bharati married an American-Canadian fellow that would live in every part of North America with her over a span of thirty-three years. She became “opting to fluidity, self-invention, blue jeans, and T-shirts, and renouncing three thousand years of caste-observant, ‘pure culture’ marriage in the Mukherjee family.” Despite their differences, the sisters knew they were the only blood relatives they had on the continent, so they had regular Sunday morning calls where they were carelessly affectionate. During these conversations the sisters would have small talk rather than speak what was truly on their mind, yet they pity one another: Mira “for the lack of structure in [Bharati’s] life, the erasure of Indianness, the absence of an unvarying daily core.” Bharati “for the narrowness of [Mira’s] perspective, her uninvolvement with the mythic depths or the superficial pop culture of the American society.” It is clear that the two differ, however, in the ways in which they hope to interact with the country

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

Bharathi Mukherjee’s later novels Jasmine(1989), The Holder of the World(1993) and Leave It to Me(1997) comprised her last creative phase conveniently termed here as the phase of immigration. By now she has travelled a long distance in terms of thematic perception and character portrayal. Beginning with an expatriate’s uprooted identity in the early 70’s, her creative faculty explored the transitional dilemma of characters in early 80’s, whose acculturation bids were occasionally thwarted by the complexity of cultural plurality in the adopted land. However, after the publication of The Middleman(1998), the process of cultural acclimatization appears to be complete and the characters betray the confidence of an immigrant, almost a naturalized citizen, in facing the challenges of human life.

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

Indian Americans have been described as a distinguished minority in terms of their successful careers, middle class aspiration and work ethic. Chaubey highlights the notion of diasporic Indians shedding their linguistic, regional and religious identities with statements like “It is arguable that one is more easily an Indian abroad than in India.”[138]Ref 22. In Unaccustomed Earth, most of the characters pursue ambitious studies, often leading to prestigious degree and professional careers. In her personal educational career Jhumpa Lahiri has owned three master degrees and a Ph.D.

When adapting to a new culture, many find it hard to assimilate into their new world while still holding on to their past life. Finding yourself in a new place with a new language and unfamiliar faces is challenging for immigrants. Jhumpa Lahiri, an immigrant herself, sheds some light on the Indian culture in her book, Interpreter of Maladies. She conveys many challenges that immigrants face when moving away from their homeland in a myriad of short stories. These short stories introduce similar themes of immigration and adaptation through different experiences. Two of Lahiri’s short stories, “A Temporary Matter” and “Mrs. Sens”, do a great job in showing similar challenges of cultural differences in two different ways. They introduce characters

One way Lahiri shows difficulties that immigrants and refugees experience, is with the theme of displacement. To illustrate the idea of displacement, Lahiri uses Mrs. Sens to show the what immigrants have trouble adjusting to in a new environment. Mrs. Sens is a middle-aged, Indian woman, who is having difficulty adjusting to the differences between India and America. Lahiri emphasizes the awkward attitude that Mrs. Sens has towards driving. When asked about her driver’s licence, Mrs. Sens points out “Yes, I am learning, but I am a slow student. At home, you know we have a driver” (113). To put it differently, Mrs. Sens finds it odd and difficult that she has to learn driving because back in India, she had a chauffeur. Furthermore, when she says she is a slow

The novel Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee is an incredible story about the transformation and life experiences of a Panjabi girl from India. The life of Jyoti is told from her point of view when she is twenty-four years old, and pregnant with the baby of Bud Ripplemeyer, a crippled banker who is more than twice Jyoti’s age. During the span of two months in Iowa, Jyoti narrates her biographical experiences in Punjab and in America as she strives to become independent. Jasmine illustrates that when one’s relationships go through changes, it will impact one’s identity.

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),