Dilemma of Immigrants in America Essay -- Literary Analysis, Bharati M

In the essay, â€Å"American Dreamer† by Bharati Mukherjee, Mukherjee writes about the problems of immigrants nowadays. Because of her families religious tradition, Mukherjee is confined by her permanent identity in her own culture, â€Å"a Hindu Indian’s last name announced his or her forefathers’ caste and place of origin†¦a Mukherjee could only be Brahmin from Bengal†¦my identity was viscerally connected with ancestral soil and genealogy† (Mukherjee 1). From her attitude towards her identity, Mukherjee does not want to confine by the Hindu tradition. She is rebellious against her own culture even though she understands Hindu tradition forbids any assimilation with any other culture. After her marriage with an American of Canadian origin, she had hard time adopting the new environment in Canada. People in Canada see her as a â€Å"visible minority† because of her race that she is not white. She remarked America as promising nation o f democracy and equality; however, America still has many flaws on the clash of ethnic issues. No matter how hard the immigrants try to assimilate into American culture, the society treats them as minority, subordinate citizens. Because they are not white, they are categorized as being â€Å"Asian-American†. She pointed out that immigrants are trapped in the† identity crisis†: a person not knowing who he or she is in the foreign culture, and some of the first-generation Indo-Americans are even â€Å"more-Indian-than-Indians-in-India† (Mukherjee 3). Similarly, in Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee, Jasmine, the protagonist is an immigrant from India and she has created different identities for every place she stays. Jasmine aspires to forget her past memories and identities, while some immigrants in the novel are seeking to reta... ...l group. Although they are U.S. citizen, they lose their sense of belonging in America. Nirrmala is living in her own little world while Professorji is disguising himself from the lost of dream. They do not know who they are and where they belong to. A wife who still keeps her Indian name and culture and a husband who attempts to fit into the American society but his ego is still drowning in his past. Mukherjee who has deserted her biological identity, she would exclaim to the immigrants that to follow the Jasmine’s belief, â€Å"to bunker oneself inside nostalgia, sheathe the heart in a bulletproof vest, was to be a coward† (Mukherjee 185). Immigrants should suppress their cultural memory, â€Å"let the past make you wary, by all means. But do not let it deform you† (Mukherjee 131). Mukherjee conveys that let the American culture to transmogrify them, but not their past.