Understanding Bharati Mukherjee -- India versus America: The tiger's daughter, Wife, and Days and nights in Calcutta -- Canada in Mukherjee's 1980s work: Darkness and The sorrow and the terror -- Immigration to the United States: The middleman and other stories and Jasmine -- Mukherjee's 1990s writing: The holder of the world and Leave it to me -- Novels for the twenty-first century: Desirable daughters, The tree bride, and Miss New India.
Summary:
"Bharati Mukherjee was an important, bold, pioneering American writer. Born in Calcutta, India on July 27, 1940 to Sudhir Lal Mukherjee and Bina (née Chatterjee), a Bengali Brahmin couple, the young Bharati--the middle of three daughters--enjoyed a privileged early life. Mukherjee's father was a biochemist who ran a successful pharmaceutical company and supported a wide network of some fifty relatives all based within the same house in Ballygunge, south Calcutta. A precociously intelligent child, Mukherjee was always highly literate, stimulated by her parents to read and study. Consuming books in a quiet corner was often a refuge from the claustrophobic demands of traditional Indian joint family living, and she began writing stories as a young child. Mukherjee was inspired by the storytelling of her paternal grandmother and her mother. Indeed, she consistently paid tribute to Bina, who proudly defended and encouraged Mukherjee and her two sisters, Mira and Ranu, against a patriarchal backdrop of ridicule from Bina's older, female in-laws for having borne Sudhir no sons." -- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.