Three Immigrant Types in Mukherjees Jasmine Essay

Three Immigrant Types in Mukherjees Jasmine The complex journey of immigration and the hardships immigrants undergo are common themes in Bharati Mukherjees writings. The author, an immigrant herself, tries to show the darker side of immigration, especially for Hindu women, that is not often portrayed in other immigrant narratives. In the novel, Jasmine Mukhedee uses three types of immigrants to show how different the hardships of adhering to life in an adopted country can be. Her main immigrant characters fall mainly into three categories: the refugee, the hyphenated immigrant, and the chameleon. The refugee immigrant type is seen in Jasmines father, Pitaji and in the Proffessodi and his wife, Nirmala. The character Du is†¦show more content†¦I have adopted this country as my home. I view myself as an American author in the tradition of other American authors whose ancestors arrived at Ellis Island. (Carb 650) Mukherjee shows this type of refugee most strongly in the character of Jasmines father, Pitaji. Jasmines family was forced to flee from the city of Lahore and the life of luxury they livd6)n Lahore my parents had lived in a big stucco house with porticoes and gardens. They had owned farmlands, shops .... In our family lore Lahore was magic and Lahore was chaos (Mukherjee 36). Pitaji is unable to cope with the loss of prestige and so, instead of adapting to country life, tries to hold on to the remnants of his past. My father was a man who had given up long before I was born .... Except when it was absolutely necessary to plant or to harvest, he would lie on a charpoy under a flowering jasmine tree all day .... After fleeing Lahore, Pitaji had been cast adrift in an uncaring, tasteless, corrupt, coarse, ignorant world (Mukherjee 36-37). Although Pitaji never leaves India, he has lost the life he once knew and is a refugee in a new lan$he refuses to adapt t6, Like Pitaji, the Proffessorji and his wife Nirmala also refuse to adapt to their new surrounding. Despite living in America, the Vadheras create a small version of India in Flushing that is unnerving to Jasmine during her stay with them. Flushing, with all its immigrant services at hand, frightened me. 1, who had every reason to