South Asian American Literature Book Reviews

South Asian American Literature by Sonja Blum Book Summary

Bharati Mukherjee was born on July 27th 1940 in Calcutta, India. In 1947 she moved with her family to England through which she was able to refine her English language skills at a very young age. After having moved back to India three years later, Bharati received her Bachelor’s Degree at the University of Calcutta in 1959 and a MA in English and Ancient Indian Culture at the University of Baroda in 1961. She immigrated to the United States of America directly after she finished college in India and obtained her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Iowa in 1963. This is also the year in which she married the Canadian student Clark Blaise with whom she will later move to his home country. Not being very happy in Canada, Mukherjee and her family settle in America in 1980. Here, she says, she feels “far more comfortable with her ‘between worlds’ status”.5 In an interview with Erin Soderberg from the University of Minnesota, Mukherjee states that her “14 years in Canada were some of the hardest of her life, as she found herself discriminated against and treated […] as a member of the ‘visible minority’”.6 I personally think that this experience influenced Bharati Mukherjee’s depiction of Canada in “The Management of Grief”. As she writes about the main character’s time in Ireland and the people’s friendly reactions towards her (“The Irish are not shy; they rush to me and give me hugs and some are crying”, p. 3367), Shaila states that she “cannot imagine reactions like that on the street of Toronto” (p. 336). This sentence reflects Mukherjee’s personal disappointment with the Canadian society and her bad experience in the country. A few pages later, Shaila’s mother tries to persuade her daughter to stay in India by saying that “Canada is a cold place” (p. 338). Quite an ambiguous remark by the author since it could relate to the cold temperature as well as to her perceived cold atmosphere in Canada. In summary, every reference to Canada is connected with adjectives of coldness (cf. “We are deep in the Toronto winter, gray skies, icy pavements”, p. 344) and sadness which probably reveals the author’s feelings towards the country.

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South Asian American Literature (Sonja Blum) Book Reviews 2024

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