The document discusses Bharati Mukherjee's novel "Jasmine" and the immigrant experience. It explores the trauma of cultural adjustment for first and second generation immigrants and Jasmine's journey of changing identities multiple times as she tries to survive in America. The protagonist Jasmine undergoes many transformations, experiencing a fluid and unsettled sense of self. The novel examines women's consciousness and navigation of a male-dominated society during their immigration.

1. Name: Hirani Khushboo A.
M.A.SEM_IV
IWE_05(B)
Topic: Immigrant experience and self- Identity in Bharati Mukharji’s
‘Jasmine’

2. Discussion
 Traumatic experience and cultural perplexity of the first and second generation
Immigrants.
 Explores the depth analysis of women consciousness self discovery and their
immigrants experience among the male dominated society.
 Jasmine(1889) set in the present about a young Indian women Jasmine in the USA
who trying to adopt to the American way of life in order to be survive, change
identities several times.
 the state of exile, a sense of loss, the pain of separation and disorientation makes
Jasmine as Immigrant personality in a quest for identity in an alien land.
 Jasmine, the protagonist of this novel. Undergoes several transformation during her
journey of life in America from jyoti to Jasmine to jane and often experiences a deep
sense of estrangement resulting in a fluid state of identity.

3. Bharti Mukharjee
 A Diasporic Writer.
 Conflict and suffering of the women settled in abroad.
 Novels are women centered, though she uses a large number of male characters in
order to portray the world of her female protagonist.
 As an Indian born Canadian/ American novelist has made a deep impression on the
literary canvass.
 Novel depicts the issues of her own cultural location in West Bengal in India.
 They were displaced and alienated from her land of origin to USA as a
‘Simultaneously invisible’ as a writer.
 ‘Over exposed’ as a racial minority.

4. Works
 Tiger’s Daughter (1971)
 Wife (1975)
 Jasmine (1989)
 The Holder of the World (1993)
 Leave it to me (1997)
 Desirable Daughters (2002)
 The Three Prides (2004)
 Miss New Indian (2011)

5. Title Character and Narrator- ‘Jasmine’
 Born appx.1965 in a Rural Indian Village called ‘Hasnpur’.
 Tells her story as a 24 years old pregnant widow, living in Iowa with her crippled lover
Bud Ripple Mayer.
 Retells the story of Punjabi birth and American adults.
 Identity changes throughout the novel along with her name.
 Accept and follows her husband by looking forward going to USA.
 Decided to fulfill the dream of her Husband.
 Having learn to ‘Walk and Talk’ like an American and grabs every opportunity to become
American (Jasmine becomes Jase).
 Creating a new world consisting of new ideas and values, constantly unmasking her past
to establish a new cultural identity by incorporating new desires, skills and habits.

6. Development as a Postcolonial Immigrants heroine
 Her narrative is set against the violent historical backdrop of post Independence,
post partition India.
 Her family settle in after 1947 in their ancestral city ‘Lahore’.
 Women thought to have been kidnaped and raped thousands of families were
divided, losing their family members as well as all of their land and possessions.
 Mukharjee has recorded the human tragedy of an experience widely perceived as a
mostly geo- political events.

7. Mukharji's attitude towards Women
 Jasmin’s early life suggest her blind commitment to tradition by exploring the social
and cultural impact.
 defined by her exceptionally and defiance of expectations.
 she performed domestic female tasks like boiling milk and haggling prices down at
the market.
 her willingness and ability to go against her grandmother’s wishes complicate
perception of culture and gender role in ‘Jasmine’.
 She come to realize the notion of a singular identity is a fallacy and the reality of the
Diasporic experience is the in terminate multiplicity.
 Different social cultural experiences relate to a process involving complex
negotiation and exchange.

8. Conclusion
 Her concern that the new identity should not suffer from marginalization and
suppression from any society.
 Mukherjee's women are brought up in a culture which ingrains them into such
mindset even from childhood.
 Breaking of linguistic and cultural barrier early due to the british colonization.

9. References
 WWW.Wikipedia.com

10. Thank you