When Bharati Mukherjee's Jasmine was published in 1989, it received wide critical praise in the mass media, but less kind treatment among academic scholars. Mukherjee had just had her greatest success in becoming the first naturalized American citizen to win the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. She won that award in 1988 for The Middleman and Other Stories.

The New York Times Book Review called Jasmine "One of the most suggestive novels we have about what it is to become American." At the year's end, it named the book one of the best of 1989. The San Francisco Chronicle and The New York Times praised the author's poetic writing style. The Library Journal said, "The novel has delicious humor and sexiness that make it a treat to read." The USA Today and others chose to focus more on its importance in raising awareness of both Indian and...