The first naturalized citizen to win the National Book Critics Circle Award, Bharati Mukherjee (b. 1940), born into a rigid hierarchy as a Bengali Brahmin and raised in the elite of Calcutta society, joined the American masses by choice. This journey from a privileged yet circumscribed life to one of free will and risk supplied the experiences she has turned into literature. From her first interview, originally published over three decades ago in her native tongue Bengali in the Calcutta journal Desh and appearing here for the first time in English, to an in-depth interview in 2007 granted specifically for this collection, this volume provides a candid look at the woman who has been called the grande dame of diasporic Indian literature.
A National Book Critics Circle Award winner and New York Times Notable Book: “intelligent, versatile . . . profound” stories of migration in America (The Washington Post Book World). Illuminating a new world of people in migration that has transformed the essence of America, these collected stories are a dazzling display of the vision of this critically-acclaimed contemporary writer. An aristocratic Filipina negotiates a new life for herself with an Atlanta investment banker. A Vietnam vet returns to Florida, a place now more foreign than the Asia of his war experience. An Indian widow tries to explain her culture’s traditions of grieving to her well-intentioned friends. And in the title story, an Iraqi Jew whose travels have ended in Queens suddenly finds himself an unwitting guerrilla in a South American jungle. Passionate, comic, violent, and tender, these stories draw us into a cultural fusion in the midst of its birth pangs, expressing a “consummated romance with the American language” (The New York Times Book Review).
After the assassination of her husband, seventeen-year-old Jasmine leaves India to live with a middle-aged banker in a small Iowa town, only to retain some of the traditions and memories of the past.
This is the remarkable story ofHannah Easton, a unique woman born in the American colonies in 1670, "aperson undreamed of in Puritan society." Inquisitive, vital and awake toher own possibilities, Hannah travels to Mughal, India, with her husband, andEnglish trader. There, she sets her own course, "translating" herselfinto the Salem Bibi, the white lover of a Hindu raja. It is also the story of BeighMasters, born in New England in the mid-twentieth century, an "assethunter" who stumbles on the scattered record of her distant relative's lifewhile tracking a legendary diamond. As Beigh pieces together details of Hannah'sjourneys, she finds herself drawn into the most intimate and spellbinding fabricof that remote life, confirming her belief that with "sufficient passionand intelligence, we can decontrsuct the barriers of time andgeography....
A very fine writer, funny, intelligent, versatile and, on occasion, unexpectedly profound." --The Washington Post Book World "MUKHERJEE IS FEARLESS . . . DARING AND WITTY . . . Take the wild ride with Debby DiMartino from Albany to San Francisco, from lost child to masked avenger." --The Boston Globe "POWERFULLY WRITTEN . . . Debby has no memory of her birth parents. All she knows is that she was born in a remote Indian village, the daughter of a hippie back-packing mother and a mysterious Eurasian father, both of whom have disappeared almost without a trace. . . . Her quest for her biological parents turns into an obsession. . . . Leave It to Me . . . shows Mukherjee at the peak of her craft. . . . Mixing the Greek myth of Electra with the Indian myth of Devi, she sends Devi/Debby careening down on the Bay Area like an elemental force of vengeance." --San Francisco Chronicle "DEVI IS A BRILLIANT CREATION--hilarious, horribly knowing and even more horribly oblivious--through whom Bharati Mukherjee, with characteristic and shameless ingenuity, is laying claim to speak for an America that isn't 'other' at all." --The New York Times Book Review "STUNNING . . . An astute, ironic, and merciless insight into an aberrant version of the American dream." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Taken under the wing of an expat teacher for her ambition and talent, Anjali Bose hopes to escape unfavorable prospects and falls in with a crowd of young people in Bangalore, where she endeavors to confront her past and reinvent herself.
In piecing together her ancestor's transformation from a docile Bengali Brahmin girl-child into an impassioned organizer of resistance against the British Raj, the contemporary narrator discovers and lays claim to unacknowledged elements in her "American" identity.
The highlight of her career to date . . . Mukherjee bursts out as a star" (Publishers Weekly [starred review]) in her stirring novel of three women, two continents, and a perilous journey from the old world to the new -- now available in paperback. In the tradition of the Joy Luck Club, Bharati Mukherjee has written a remarkable novel that is both the portrait of a traditional Brahmin Indian family and a contemporary American story of a woman who has in many ways broken with tradition but still remains tied to her native country. Mukherjee follows the diverging paths taken by three extraordinary Calcutta-born sisters as they come of age in a changing world. Moving effortlessly between generations, she weaves together fascinating stories of the sisters' ancestors, childhood memories, and dramatic scenes from India's history.
The first naturalized citizen to win the National Book Critics Circle Award, Bharati Mukherjee (b. 1940), born into a rigid hierarchy as a Bengali Brahmin and raised in the elite of Calcutta society, joined the American masses by choice. This journey from a privileged yet circumscribed life to one of free will and risk supplied the experiences she has turned into literature. From her first interview, originally published over three decades ago in her native tongue Bengali in the Calcutta journal Desh and appearing here for the first time in English, to an in-depth interview in 2007 granted specifically for this collection, this volume provides a candid look at the woman who has been called the grande dame of diasporic Indian literature.
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