SOURCE: “‘Singing in the Seams’: Bharati Mukherjee's Immigrants,” in No Small World: Visions and Revisions of World Literature, National Council of Teachers of English, 1996, pp. 189-201.

In the following essay, Banerjee examines Mukherjee's short stories and concludes that the author is masterful at describing the difficulties faced by immigrants and the extraordinary ways in which they create new identities for themselves.

I see myself in an article on a Trinidad-Indian hooker; I see myself in the successful executive who slides Hindi film music in his tape deck as he drives into Manhattan; I see myself in the shady accountant who's trying to marry off his loose-living daughter; in professors, domestics, high school students, illegal busboys in ethnic restaurants. It's possible, with sharp ears and the right equipment—to hear America singing even in the seams of the dominant culture. In fact, it may be the best listening post...