Kimberly Dru Pritchard

June 12, 2006

The Metamorphoses of the Female Immigrant
 in Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine

“In America, nothing lasts.  I can say that now, and t doesn’t shock me,  but I think it was the hardest lesson of all for me to learn.  We arrive so eager to learn, to adjust, to participate, only to find the monuments are plastic, agreements are annulled.   Nothing is forever, nothing is so terrible or so wonderful, that it won’t disintegrate.”

                                                                                                           - from Jasmine

          During the seminar Colonial and Post-Colonial Literature in the fall of 2005, I discovered not only the diversity of Post-Colonial texts, but the fact that many of the texts are celebrated immigrant narratives.  Post-colonial texts often describe an era “of, relating to, or being the time following the establishment of independence in a colony” after the departure of the imperial powers (“Introduction to Postcolonial Studies” website). One of the most interesting novels we read in the Colonial and Post-Colonial literature class was Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine.  At the time, the novel was studied and analyzed as a Post-Colonial text in dialogue with the Colonial text, A Passage to India.  However, in light of the objectives for the American Immigrant literature class, I would like to rediscover and re-evaluate Mukherjee’s Jasmine as a classic model of American Immigrant literature as well as a study of the effects of acculturation and assimilation on the female immigrant.

            To begin, it is important to examine information regarding immigration in the United States and its subsequent effect on the national literature. Immigration, a traumatic process, basically follows the same pattern today as it did in the early years when first generation immigrants arrived in the United States full of hopes and dreams of a better life.  In a 1946 issue of College English, author Carl Wittke describes immigration as a “desperate adventure – the most important moment in the lifetime of any man when he [says] farewell to his native land forever and [watches] its coast line sink beneath the horizon” (190).  Furthermore, the problems faced by cultural minorities when they enter the United States are overpowering because there is a “conflict in the soul of the immigrant who must reject the Old World in order to be accepted in the New…[there is] anxiety, aspiration, unhappiness, and sheer confusion” (190).  However, the completion of this journey along with the experience itself not only enriches the American culture but also lays the foundation for the formation of the immigrant voice within the American literary culture. 

            With this said, the next step was to investigate Mukherjee and her narrative technique as well as the novel in terms of the female immigrant. Jasmine’s popularity has risen into the mainstream and academic world and was received with acclaim in nearly every major review publication.  Furthermore, the narrative has been increasingly taught in women’s studies, ethnic studies, and contemporary American literature courses (Carter-Sanborn 575).  In the novel, Jasmine assumes numerous identities as she assimilates into the American culture, and according to critics, much of this comes from Mukherjee’s personal experience. Mukherjee herself admits that her “’literary agenda begins by acknowledging that America has transformed {her}.  It does not end until [she] shows how [she] (and the hundreds of thousands like [her]) have transformed America’” (Drake 60).  It is important to note that her writing, largely autobiographical, crams a world of detail into fragments of story, compresses constant motion, travel, and discontinuous overload, and this is just how immigration feels; consequently, this is how America feels (Drake 70).  Through her “immigrant-structured” narrative, Mukherjee transforms Jasmine from a naïve, sheltered immigrant into an assimilated, ambitious American woman with the power to make choices and changes within the new culture. Moreover, the work takes the subject of the “authoritative ambivalence” or uncertain promise of the United States cultural space as one of its main subjects which further complicates the researchable structure of the novel as its multiple layers become embedded within the traditional structure. 

            Almost every element of the immigrant narrative punctuates Mukherjee’s Jasmine. I discovered that one significant aspect of the immigrant story as it relates to Jasmine is the presence of violence in the life of the immigrant, and in Jasmine’s case, this includes epistemic, metaphoric, and literal violence (Carter-Sanborn 588).  Kristin Carter-Sanborn elaborates in great detail in her article “Jasmine and the Violence of Identity” about the presence of violence as an integral part of the immigrant narrative.  She likens Jasmine’s character transformations to violent “suicides and rebirths” and further emphasizes the fact that this could indeed be compared to the “process of decolonization.”  Furthermore, Mukherjee makes violence contiguous with the very constitution of American identity, broadly construed to include dominant as well as “ethnic” cultural forms (577, 586).  The violence, along with other elements of the immigrant narrative in Jasmine including but not limited to leaving the Old World and journeying to the New, shock, resistance, and exploitation, and assimilation to the dominant American culture which includes the loss of ethnic identity are what consolidate the novel not only as a post-modern, post-colonial novel but as a contemporary snapshot of the multi-cultural, multi-ethnic world that America has become.

            After reading about and considering the topic of the metamorphoses of the female immigrant in Jasmine, I have found that a great deal of critical material exists in relation to this particular topic, and I have merely scratched the surface with the little research I found.  I am interested in investigating this topic further, and perhaps, I will find an excellent possibility for my upcoming independent study…that is if I can leave Song of Solomon behind!

Works Cited

Carter-Sanborn, Kristin.  “’We Murder Who We Were:’ Jasmine and the Violence of Identity.”  American Literature 66 (September 1994): 573-593.  JSTOR.  6 June 2006 <http://www.jstor.org/>.

Drake, Jennifer.  “Looting American Culture:  Bharati Mukherjee’s Immigrant Narratives.”  Contemporary Literature 40 (Spring 1999): 60-84.  JSTOR. 6 June 2006 <http://www.jstor.org/>.

Wittke, Carl.  “Melting-Pot Literature.”  College English 7 (1946): 189-197.  JSTOR. 6 June 2006 <http://www.jstor.org/>.