Mukherjee's Novel Jasmine example essay topic

Mukherjee was born in Calcutta, India in 1940 to upper-caste (Brahmin) parents. She emigrated first to the United States in 1961, and then to Canada in 1968. She is a naturalized citizen of both countries. She married an American in 1963 while completing her MFA and Ph. D. at the University of Iowa. She has written numerous critically acclaimed books, of which Jasmine is one of the most recent. Most of her novels reflect her personal experiences traveling between two worlds; her native India and North America (represented by the USA and Canada).

All of her books deal with young women trying to cross cultural boundaries, reconcile old and new identities, and somehow create a stable life. Mukherjee actually returned to India with her husband in 1973, but she no longer felt at home. She found a world far less innocent than she remembered, and found that fondly remembered traditions now hid fear and oppression (especially for women). As a result, most of her work also deals with the promises and pitfalls of what we call "globalization" in HIS 212. Jasmine is a very rich text, and I want you to pay very close attention to culture clashes, especially as they are reflected in Jasmine's various incarnations.

In late 1989, Mukherjee told the Los Angeles Times "I truly appreciate the special qualities that America and American national myths offer me. I've lived everywhere [and] I'm truly touched and moved by the idea of America. It includes you and is curious about other people. Includes you, allows you to think of yourself as American. Other countries in Europe, and Canada, deliberately exclude you. You wouldn't dare to think of yourself [as one of them]".

In a Publishers Weekly interview from the same year, she added "mine is a clear-eyed but definite love of America. I'm aware of the brutalities, the violences here, but in the long run my characters are survivors; they " ve been helped, as I have, by good, strong people of conviction. Like Jasmine, I feel there are people born to be Americans. By American I mean an intensity of spirit and equality of desire. I feel American in a very fundamental way, whether American se me that way or not". Does America represent global culture for Mukherjee?

Is this a place for survivors to go and start over? If so, is the cost we impose on these people too great to be justified? 1.1. The book skips around chronologically a great deal. Why is this? Remember, Mukherjee is a brilliant writer, and everything in this book appears for a reason. 2.2.

What are the significance of these pairings: Pradesh and Jyoti, Taylor and Jase, Bud and Jane? How do they correspond to stages of development in Jasmine's life? 3.3. What is the connection between Jasmine and Du; they seem to understand each other without speaking? How does Du attempt to fuse two cultures (remember what he does with electronics)? 4.4. What do you make of Jasmine's encounter with Half-face (Bubba) in the Florida Keys?

Why did Mukherjee include such a graphic scene? 5.5. What role do Lillian Gordon and her daughter Kate Gordon-Feldstein play in Jasmine's life? What is the significance of the time in New York she spends with Taylor, Wylie, and Duff? Why does she like this so much more than her time with Professor ji Devin dor (David) Vad hera and family? 6.6.

Jasmine ends up living with Bud, a divorced, 50-something rural banker in Iowa. What is his relationship to the local farmers? Why does he initially like Jasmine so much, from the very first moment he sees her (what does she represent to him)? What does he represent to her? 7.7.

In the end, Taylor and Duff find a very pregnant Jasmine in Iowa, and it appears she will leave for California with them. How do you feel about this ending (is it happy or not)? Or, are we way beyond happy and sad, and merely at the point of survival? In other words, does the real appeal of the US lie in the fact that people with damaged lives and broken dreams can start over and re-invent themselves in a new location?

If that is the case, is it good to forget your history (especially if it hurts you more than it helps you)? Bharati Mukherjee's novel Jasmine has been critically acclaimed as a positive affirmation of a poor, uneducated, Indian village girl's "metamorphosis, self-invention, and self-empowerment" (Chua, 57) in America and of her constant self-reincarnation to achieve the American dream. 1 Among critics Mukherjee is considered one of the few ethnic artists who looks beyond the immigrant's sense of alienation and dislocation to trace "psychological transformation-especially among women" (Connell, 15) and who focuses on the positive opportunities provided by America to empower Asian women.