Bharati Mukherjee
Bharati
Mukherjee (born July 27, 1940) is an award-winning
Indian born American
writer. She is currently a professor in the Department
of English at the University of California, Berkeley.
Of Bengali
origin, Mukherjee hails from Kolkata, West Bengal,
India. She later traveled with her parents to Europe
after Independence, only returning to Kolkata in the
early 1950s. She received her B.A. from the University of Calcutta in 1959 and her M.A. from the
University of Baroda in 1961. She next traveled
to the United States to study at the University of
Iowa. She received her M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1963 and her Ph.D. in 1969 from the Department of
Comparative Literature.
Mukherjee
married writer Clark Blaise in 1963. Together they have written two works of
non-fiction, Days and Nights
in Calcutta (1977) and The Sorrow and the Terror: The Haunting Legacy of the Air
India Tragedy (1987). After more than a decade
living in Canada (Montreal and Toronto), Mukherjee,
Blaise, and their children moved to the United States.
Mukherjee wrote of the decision in "An
Invisible Woman", published in a 1981 issue of
Saturday Night.
Mukherjee has
taught at McGill University, Skidmore College, Queens
College, and City University of New York.
Works
An early and
popular work of fiction is Jasmine 1989. In this novel, a young Indian
woman becomes an illegal immigrant to the United
States and acculturates by taking on a series of
different identities.
Mukherjee
strives in her novels to understand what is meant by
the idea of American-ism(read identity), and whether
in a world of hybridity and multiplicity, such a
notion can exist. This is particularly evident in her
more recent works The Holder
of the World (1993), Leave It to Me (1997) and Desirable Daughters (2002). Her latest novel is The Tree Bride, (2004). Mukerjee is a member of
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Novels
The Tiger's Daughter (1971)
Wife (1975)
Jasmine (1989)
The Holder of the World (1993)
Leave It to Me (1997)
Desirable Daughters (2002)
The Tree Bride (2004)
Short stories
Darkness (1985)
The Middleman and Other Stories (1988)
Awards
  1988: National Book Critics Circle Award (The
Middleman and Other Stories).
