T 1290.pdf - Pondicherry University DSpace Portal

For herself, she has decided that the "United States is theembodiment of the openiress, iiberalism and freedom. A cultureof dreamers, a land of transformation, where an individual canreverse omens". (Purewal 1990,4)Black Amerlcan writers might not agree with Mukherjee'srose trnted view of America, but then she has a theory: shedlsmlsses the work of black writers like Alice Walker and ToniMorrison as another experience of "slave history" which has noparallels with Tte immigrant experience. Neither do theAmerican Indlans on reservations, penned away from the Americanmainstream, colour the polrtlcal world of Kukherjee. For her it1s simply a matter of "grabbing mainstream America by thelapels and tellirq it that we belong". (Purewal 1990,4). Sheseem to exhort the reader to forget about United Statesforeiqr policy, mclti-nationals. American imperialism which isnot the America she wants to write about.In thls careful co.istruct of Amerlca, then, she placesher Jasmines and her Dimple Dasg,Jptas like the sari thatBharati Mukherjee st111 wears despite her "transformedIdentity". Indian exotica is draped around her stories in theform of a village soothsayer or a veil, when her heroines areyouag an3 still llvlng in the natlve land. It 1s only when theycome to America that they are reborn free. Jasmlne, for examplediscovers her true self in the Amerizan midwest where she