Presented by Dr Jyoti Nandan as part of the SLLL Literary Studies Seminar Series

The diasporic individual is, in a sense, in an in-between space. As Salman Rushdie puts it, this space can be enriching in that it allows one to straddle two worlds. However, as he continues, at times one falls between two stools; in other worlds belongs to neither world. This paper refers to selected writings of Indian American writer Bharati Mukherjee to interrogate her representation of the immigrant experience, in particular that of the woman migrant. While Mukherjee’s fiction depicts the challenges faced by immigrants, it suggests that migration can free one to become what one is capable of becoming. Identity, for her, is fluid, ever changing.  Her oeuvre reflects the development in her own perspective on the immigrant experience – her move from, to use her own words, ‘the detachment of the expatriate to the exuberance of the immigrant’. However, she also insists that the presence of migrants contributes to the growth of the society, that if migrants transform so does their adopted land.

Furthermore, Mukherjee’s fiction throws light on the gendered dimension of migration. The male experience is generally seen as representative; however, the trajectory traced by the women of this group differs in many respects from that of the men. This is primarily because they are doubly colonized – discriminated against not only because of their race but also because of their gender. Mukherjee’s fiction further suggests that the notion of an average migrant woman omits the real differences between these women, denying them individuality. I refer specifically to Mukherjee’s novel Wife—written at an early stage in her writing career, the short story ‘The Lady from Lucknow’ from Darkness—her first collection of short stories, the short story ‘A Wife’s Story’ fromThe Middleman and Other Stories—her second collection of short stories, her more recent novel Jasmine and selected interviews.

Dr Jyoti Nandan is an honorary Associate Professor in the School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics, ANU. She has published widely in the area of women’s writing.  Her current research focus is diasporic women writers from South Asia.

Image: Bharati Mukherjee. Photograph by Chip Cooper.