SOURCE: “Cultural Collisions: Dislocation, Reinvention, and Resolution in Bharati Mukherjee,” in Proteus: A Journal of Ideas, Vol. 11, No. 2, Fall, 1994, pp. 35-8.

In the following essay, Morton-Mollo discusses Mukherjee's depiction in The Middleman and Other Stories and Jasmine of the cultural “process” and “reidentification” immigrants undergo as they adapt to and transform their new world.

Bharati Mukherjee is a twice-transplanted immigrant—from her native India originally and then from her husband's home country, Canada, where she experienced excruciating and humiliating racism; her works (the novel Jasmine and the short story collection The Middleman and Other Stories) reflect not only the dislocation and alienation inherent in the immigrant experience but also depict the “process” of moving into, adapting to, and influencing a new and alien culture. Mukherjee's themes are personal and, in her particular instance, universal because her “process” as writer and as immigrant have merged into one: duplicating—often...