T 1290.pdf - Pondicherry University DSpace Portal

that she rejected Naipaul as a model and chose Bernard Malamud"Like Malamud, I write about a minority communitywhich escapes the ghetto and adapts itself to the patterns ofthe domlnant Amerlcan culture"(Mukher]ee 1990,35) The shiftfrom Naipaul to Malamud as literary model signlfles thetransition from the exiled expatriate to the vibrant immigrant.Unlike the expatriate with his/her nostalgia for thepast, the immigrant plunges Into the present and getsenthuslastlcally lnvolved In the envlronment around hlmlher.Whlle the exlle parades paln and qrlevance, the lmmlgrantcelebrates the fact of belng allve In a new world, of beingreborn. Immigrants are energetic, reslllent, able to acceptchanges. They themselves change in the encounter of culturesand they also brlng about change ln thelr environment. Theasslmilatlon Involved In lmmlgratlon does not mean a denlal ofthe past. It only means glvlng up a rigld holdlnq-on to thepasc. It 1s a recognition of duallty, of fluld identity rn thelmmlgrant. It 1s an acknowledgement of alternate realities.In Darkness, Mukherjee says that she saw her Indlanness not "asa fraglle identity to be preserved agalnst obliteration" but"3s a set of fluld identities to be celebratedV(3).In the collection of stories, Darkness (published ln19853 four were wrltten In Canada, rn Montreal and Toronto.They are "The World accordinq to Hsu", "Isolated Incidents",