Manhattan Music Analysis

Surviving as an Immigrant
Meena Alexannder in her novel Manhattan Music says, "Immigrants are like that - our spiritual flesh scooped up from here and there. All our memories are sizzling. But we need another. Another is for the electricity. So we can live."(154)
The concept of 'home' has become a question for immigrants. They have an experience of leaving home and how leaving home changes them. This program from the known habitation to the unknown place contains many difficulties. The immigrants sway between the host land and homeland in the awareness of their gender habits, identity, custom, politics and culture which are psychological, sociological, cultural and political. The Traditional ancestral responsibilities and roles are often exacerbated

And what of the home they carry with them? How they feel about sense of self? How do they deal with that as they move into a place where self means something quite different? It is also important to note that if they suppress their sense of past and their heritage that will come out in many other ways. 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

When her mother visits this shop, she tells them, " This isn't a real cha-shop... she pronounces the word in Bengali way... but a mishmash, a western notion of what's Indian". (89) This is a perfect congent of Kakar's concept of adaptation in American life. He says, " In the process of convergence the impact of minority cultures on the mainstream can occur when elements of their culture are absorbed by Anglo-American community, thus creating a composite culture". (kakar,1991.25) So her mother desires her daughter to get habituated to her American way of life and to line in between two nations. That's why she holds her for her failing in the Chai house. She says, "The reason you don't have enough power to fight that woman there is that she knows exactly who she is, and you don't.... May be that's the problem. May be if you can make it into something authentic, you will survive.(89) Rakhi retorts her mother telling that her haunting silence about her country and her own past accounts for her "warped sense of what's Indian"(89) That's why her mother admits her fault for not telling her all those things and incidents. Then she gives her a valid explanation for her