Transitions Across Worlds: Mukherjee Controversy

All humans, at some point in our short lives, will probably be faced with some critical decisions to make. One of the most basic necessities of successfully making these decisions is "raw" courage. Millions of people throughout the world immigrate to foreign land every year. The courage required to do so is something very difficult to fathom.

Hundreds of thousands of immigrants choose to come to the culturally diverse "melting pot" of America each year, and at increasing rates. It's almost inevitable that each individual immigrant must leave behind at least some original, home-grown, core values and adopt new pieces of a new life. Once this stage in a "transition across worlds" is reached, perhaps one might feel "trapped," or "caught" between two worlds. One might automatically and instinctively seek balance, and try to create symmetry out of such chaos. This is exactly the case for the main character, Jasmine (aka Jane and Jyotie) in our new novel from author, Bharati Mukherjee. Jasmine was born in a make-shift, birthing hut in Northwest India. There, she grew to her adolescent years and gathered the courage to take on a "transition across worlds," by immigrating to the United States. Jasmine abandons her native country, and goes in search for the "American Dream" cliche. This however raises the questions- "Is Jasmine negatively loosing her cultural identity and running away from her life in India? Or is she reinventing herself positively, and gaining a newly redefined, exciting identity?

At this point in the novel, it is difficult to predict which path Jasmine is taking. Although, she gives us some clues as to what her position is, in regards to abandoning and possibly gaining a new identity. Jasmine showed interest early, in what might be a plan to go to a new land, by learning some English. On page 68, she claims, "To want English is to want more than you were given at birth, it was to want the world." But then in regards to abandonment, she states on page 33, "For me, experience must be forgotten, or else it will kill." Here, she attempts to remove pieces of her past from her memory, indicating a sense of "running away" to a new identity. Showing perhaps a loyalty to her roots, Jasmine tells us in the hospital, "I trust only Asian doctors, Asian professionals." (32) Contradicting that same loyalty on page 29, Jasmine states, "This country (her new one, being the U.S.) has so many ways of humiliating and disappointing." Jasmine is clearly having difficulty transitioning to a new world, and may be "stuck" between the old and the new.

Early in the novel, Jasmine gives us some vague insight to what she desires as a person with a vision and goals. On page 15, she tells us, "I know what I don't want to become." And at the beginning of Chapter 2, she states, "Dullness is a kind of luxury.........Plain Jane is all I want to be." We are perhaps too early in the novel to know exactly what path Jasmine is taking, and if her courageous decisions are active or passive. The rest of the novel should reveal if Jasmine is running away from her cultural identity, or running towards a new one. Or can she play both roles at the same time? Could Jasmine be reinventing herself and survive in the United States, while abandoning her native country? Analyzing the text so far, she perhaps "teeters" to both sides, leaving us curious to find out.