In the following essay, Bowen discusses Mukherjee's depiction of how the various cultural groups in "The Management of Grief" deal with tragic loss, "translating" grief according to their cultural experience.

The word "translation" comes, etymologically, from the Latin for "bearing across." Having been borne across the world, we are translated men. It is normally supposed that something always gets lost in translation; I cling, obstinately, to the notion that something can also be gained. SALMAN RUSHDIE, Imaginary Homelands

In the final article of the special January 1995 issue of PMLA on "Colonialism and the Postcolonial Condition," Satya Mohanty observes that "vital cross-cultural interchange depends on the belief that we share a 'world' (no matter how partially) with the other culture, a world whose causal relevance is not purely intracultural." There are occasions on which such a shared world is traumatically imposed upon diverse groups of people. If ever...