Bharati Mukherjee has distinguished herself among the ground-breaking novelists in the genre of diasporic Indian literature. Her account of the experience of the diaspora and its effect upon women provide the readers with an insight into the lives of South-Asians who currently reside in the United States.
This paper aims to study how Bharati Mukherjee has captured the chaos of the Melting Pot about the Indian immigrant experiences in America in her short stories and novels. The longing for the security of home and comfort of their own culture creates a conflict known only to those born in the third world, burdened with the choice of living in the West. While changing citizenship is easy, swapping culture is not.
Multiculturalism is a theme
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She dramatizes the conflict between the immigrants’ old belief systems and the New World ethos, and lends an artistic voice to their experiences of trauma and triumph.
She says about the immigrants in her article :
“They have all shed past lives and languages, and have traveled half the world in every direction to come here and begin again.” (Mukherjee 28).
Her stories explore the ways in which we, who are exposed to many cultures in the age of globalization and information technology, combine our many heritages into a new singular whole.
Mukherjee’s novel The Tiger’s Daughter addresses Tara’s difficulties of being caught between two world, homes and cultures and is an examination of who she is and where she belongs. Tara realized after living 7 years in America, she had forgotten many of her Hindu rituals of worshipping which she had learned since childhood :
“But she could not remember the next step of the ritual. It was not a simple loss, Tara feared, this forgetting of prescribed actions, it was a little death, a hardening of the heart, a cracking of axis and center.” (Mukherjee
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The futures they propel themselves toward –– and even help to shape –– are not guaranteed to be successful, but have the potential for personal, material and spiritual success. By contrast, those of her characters who hold on to history, the past and their past places in their cultures simply for the sake of maintaining its traditions are doomed to failure, stresses and often death.
Mukherjee has presented a true picture of the problems of the clash of cultures and adjustments faced by an immigrant in an alien land. She recommends that one should forget his past and try to become a part of the new place by adopting their lifestyle and culture with an open mind. One’s determination and willingness to transform and adjust can make his or her assimilation easier.
This current issue of multiculturalism is a burning problem of society since the number of people who are migrating to new places is increasing enormously day by day. As Mukherjee has gone through all this herself, she is more convincing in her writing than other writers of our times. People can easily identify with her works. Her literature and the portrayal of the present scenario are very realistic and can capture the spirit and the heart of the modern
“Like many immigrant offspring I felt intense pressure to be two things, loyal to the old world and fluent in the new, approved of on either side of the hyphen” (Lahiri, My Two lives). Jhumpa Lahiri, a Pulitzer Prize winner, describes herself as Indian-American, where she feels she is neither an Indian nor an American. Lahiri feels alienated by struggling to live two lives by maintaining two distinct cultures. Lahiri’s most of the work is recognized in the USA rather than in India where she is descents from (the guardian.com). Lahiri’s character’s, themes, and imagery in her short stories and novels describes the cultural differences of being Indian American and how Indian’s maintain their identity when moved to a new world. Lahiri’s inability to feel accepted within her home, inability to be fully American, being an Indian-American, and the difference between families with same culture which is reflected in one of her short stories “Once in a Lifetime” through characterization and imagery.
middle of paper ... ... Given that multiculturalism is a framework that says that anyone can sit at the table so long as they accept certain political and cultural divisions which ultimately work to make impossible your ability to change the basic structure of meaning in society, or which seek to extract any political potential from the things you say, the things you embody and the things you want. You can have holidays, but not your language. You can have a month of the year for your race, but no justice.
Mukherjee then begins to compare and contrast her sister in a subject-by-subject organization. She states, “…she clings passionately to her Indian citizenship and hopes to go home to India when she...
It is important to understand first, Kymlicka’s take on multiculturalism in order to have a clear grasp on Kymlicka’s claim for the need for national minorities to have access to their cultures. In his book, Multicultural Citizenship, national culture is a central concept, used interchangeably wi...
The author experienced a background history with this country. Indeed, he wanted to be a foreign journalist, so when he was offered a job by the NPR in India, he could not resist. As a correspondent, his job was to cover the main political and economic events about modern India, and he did not get to know the other India: the one with gurus, yoga, meditation, and what seemed to lead to a direct path to happiness. However, this time he came to India with a special purpose: to write about Indian’s happiness, and to find answers about the mystery of this country’s attraction of westerners.
As Indians living in white culture, many problems and conflicts arise. Most Indians tend to suffer microaggressions, racism and most of all, danger to their culture. Their culture gets torn from them, and slowly, as if it was dream, many Indians become absorbed into white society, all the while trying to retain their Indian lifestyle. In Indian Father’s Plea by Robert Lake and Superman and Me by Sherman Alexie, the idea that a dominant culture can pose many threats to a minority culture is shown by Wind-Wolf and Alexie.
Multiculturalism policy ensures people from different ethnic, racial, religious, and linguistic backgrounds coexist together. Ng, Eddy and Isabel affirmed that the strategic tolerance fostered through the policy enhance the development of a national identity centered around multiculturalism with much ado about citizenship and naturalization process (254). In the long-term, the policy reduces hostilities between the natives and immigrants. Durante Chris explained that, “As both a political philosophy and public policy, multiculturalism has become one of the leading approaches for coping with problems that arise when attempting to accommodate the needs of ethnic, cultural, and religious communities in a liberal democracy,” (323). In the long-term, the policy reduces hostilities between the natives and immigrants, thereby creating a society where cultural identity and ethnic diversity enjoys mutual respect and tolerance – suitable ingredients for social cohesion. Peace and harmony within a society prevails if each group feel respected and allowed to associate with their identity without prejudice. However, issues have risen in Canada where the natives feel immigrants are overburdening their them and introducing new cultures. If such situation is the case, multiculturalism could impact negatively on social
multiculturalism hype is not all it is cut out to be and segregates communities rather
What is MULTICULTURALISM? Multiculturalism is an ideology that numerous different cultures (without one’s own national culture) can coexist peacefully and equitably in a single country. Canadian Multiculturalism Act (1988) The purpose of the Act is “to preserve, intensify and integrate cultural differences” within Canadian society. Multiculturalism as a “positive instrument of change” aimed at the removal of barriers is also presented by this act.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is a renowned South Asian Diaspora writer with her ancestral roots at Bengal. The women authors of the Indian Diaspora are the artefacts of two cultures; firstly, they are unsure of their status-quo related to the mainstream and secondly in relation to their minority group; because South Asian Diaspora itself constitutes a minority discourse in respect of the canons of globalization, neo-colonialism or ‘melting pot’. Grappling with the problem of defining their identities they put their utmost effort to shift from the margin to the center. It is this location or ‘in-between’ space which has inspired the leading women writers of Indian origin in America such as Bharati Mukherjee, Jhumpa Lahiri, Kiran Narayan, Chitra
Bharati Mukherjee’s story, “Two Ways to Belong in America”, is about two sisters from India who later came to America in search of different ambitions. Growing up they were very similar in their looks and their beliefs, but they have contrasting views on immigration and citizenship. Both girls had been living in the United States for 35 years and only one sister had her citizenship. Bharati decided not to follow Indian traditional values and she married outside of her culture. She had no desire to continue worshipping her culture from her childhood, so she became a United States citizen. Her ideal life goal was to stay in America and transform her life. Mira, on the other hand, married an Indian student and they both earned labor certifications that was crucial for a green card. She wanted to move back to India after retirement because that is where her heart belonged. The author’s tone fluctuates throughout the story. At the beginning of the story her tone is pitiful but then it becomes sympathizing and understanding. She makes it known that she highly disagrees with her sister’s viewpoints but she is still considerate and explains her sister’s thought process. While comparing the two perspectives, the author uses many
Nunez-Harrell, Elizabeth. "The Paradoxes of Belonging: The White West Indian Woman in Fiction." MFS Modern Fiction Studies 31.2 (1985): 281-293.
Upamanyu Chatterjee is one contemporary Indian English author who has attracted adulation and admonition in equal measures. His critics, who find his novels often dealing with unpalatable issues, loaded with heavy negativity, cynicism and turgid expressions, however, unanimously aver that he is witty and intelligent, endowed with a unique style of wry playfulness mixed with keen observation. He defies conventions and is rarely calm or ‘normal’ in his novels. Having emerged as the sort of champion of the de-centred and de-cultured, Chatterjee delves deep in the postmodern ethos of the contemporary Indian scenario. But the question is, are the ‘bleak-books’ of Upamanyu Chatterjee really devoid of any redeeming positive value? This study attempts to get the answer of this question through the process of deconstructing the author’s sensibility and the formative influences on his creativity.
In his article “The Failure of Multiculturalism”, Kenan Malik uses the diverse European culture to study and explain the irony of multiculturalism. He defines multiculturalism as “the embrace of an inclusive, diverse society” (Malik 21). Integration between cultures is practically inevitable, but several nations view this as a threat towards upholding their culture. Due to this, many countries have made attempts at properly integrating new people and ideas while trying to prevent the degradation of their own. This can result in unjust regulations and the reverse effect of an intended multicultural society.
As an immigrant, Chitra Banerjee seems to take pride in being more of a Westerner and less of an Indian. Her all works portray the complexities faced by immigrants. She has exceeded boundaries, conveying two different worlds from various viewpoints. In an interview with Morton Marcus, She explained briefly about her writings and