T 1290.pdf - Pondicherry University DSpace Portal

American writer who believes that he only haslife. (Carb 1990,35)It asm mine is far from being the archetypal Indian immigrant,it is because she has no struggle wlth her past. Actually, itIS the Nirmalas and Professorjis who live in the little Indiasor expatriates In the United States and whom Jasmine encountersenroute to liberation, that Bharati Mukherjee has littlesympathy for. They have no real cultural identity, instead onlya cowardly fear of change.The lmmigrants Mukherlee writes about are not timidobsequious ones who have established themselves as the greenhornsand stereotypes; rather she celebrates the fighters, theconfident ones, those who were born to take the money and run.Mukherjee's choice of subject makes a lot of sense if for noother reason than that rt is virgln territory. And there is nodoubt that she 1s unlquely placed to wrlte about the newAmerican, because she is one of them. An extremely articulatewoman, she wrote recently in the &K XQ& Times Book Reviewthat as an ex-colonial she had a great legacy- the ability,to be two thrngs simultaneously : to be thedispossessed as well as the dispossessor .... Historyforced us to see ourselves as both the 'We' and the'other'.... It is this hlstory-mandated training inseeing myself as 'the other' that now heaps on me afluid set of rdent~ties denied to most of mymainstream Amerlcan counterparts. (Davidar 1989,5)