Identity Crisis

The major concept of “American Dreamer” is about the identity of immigrants. Mukherjee says, it an “identity crisis” which “one’s identity was fixed, derived from religion, caste, patrimony, and mother tongue”. Because of her families religious tradition, Mukherjee is embittered 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”. 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 had hard time adopting the new environment in Canada. People in Canada see her as a “visible minority” because of her race that she is not white. She remarked America as promising nation of democracy and equality; however, America still has many flaws on the clash of ethnic issues. No matter how hard the immigrants try to assimilate into American culture, the society treats them as minority, subordinate citizens. Because they are not white, they are categorized as being “Asian-American”. She pointed out that immigrants are trapped in the” identity crisis”: a person not knowing who he or she is in the foreign culture. She believes in order to for them to become a “real’ American, immigrants must disregard their cultural memory and past.

This concept of “identity crisis” is demonstrated in Jasmine, the protagonist has multiple identities throughout the novel. Jasmine left her own country and went to America for a n...

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...gh searching and preserving of their Indian culture. They find their comfort zone within their own racial group. Although they are U.S. citizen, they lose their sense of belonging in America. Nirrmala is living in her own little world while Professorji is disguising himself from the lost of dream. They do not know who they are and where they belong to in America. A wife who still keeps her Indian name and culture and a husband who attempts to fit into the American society but his ego is still drowning in his past. Mukherjee who has deserted her biological identity, she would exclaim to the immigrants that “to bunker oneself inside nostalgia…was to be a coward” (Mukherjee 185). Immigrants should abandon their cultural memory and let the American culture to transmogrify them. “Let the past make you wary, by all means. But do not let it deform you” (Mukherjee 131).