812 Mukherjee, Bharati
immigrants. He despises the fact that he and his
kind have become “coolie labor” in their own coun-
try. Maya’s first landlord is dependent on her cash
but he maintains a deliberate distance until he finds
an excuse to evict her. The social and economic
failures endured by this group serve as a unique
contrast to the immigrant groups and reveal to the
reader another face of American society: These
people are a far cry from the white picket fence and
suburban home. In fact, through this diasporic per-
spective, the reader is able to discern the emergence
of another America: a society undergoing constant
transformation through the activities taking place
not through its mainstream life but rather on its
peripheries and margins. In this society, it is the
immigrant rather than the citizenry who enjoys
economic and social success, often making more
fruitful contributions to the larger society than
the legal citizens; this is the invisible America that
increasingly demands a voice, one that has been
effectively provided through the short stories in this
collection.
Saadiqa Khan
Sur vival in The Middleman and Other Stories
Bharati Mukherjee explores in her collection one of
the oldest and most basic concerns in the study of
ethnic literature: the business of survival. With the
exception of “The Middleman” and “Buried Lives,”
the stories focus on the challenges of surviving
in the new homeland of post-Vietnam America,
depicted as an unforgiving and hostile landscape.
The characters undertake these challenges in two
ways that reflect their perceptions about living
within these new borders. For those migrants who
are forcibly uprooted from their old homes, the new
homeland is viewed as an in-transit destination, and
thus the acquisition of opportunities to remain eco-
nomically viable remains central to their daily exis-
tence. For the lucky migrants who can return, being
ready and prepared for such a border crossing is
essential. In other cases where return remains elusive
for the displaced person, provisionality remains the
order of the day. For some migrants who voluntarily
leave their old homes, life in the new host society
goes beyond basic survival as they seek to recre-
ate their lives and pursue goals and ambitions that
were unlikely or impossible in their old homes. Very
often Mukherjee juxtaposes these two conflicting
attitudes in her stories.
Alfred Judah, the displaced Jew, turns survival
into an art form. Whether he is in New Jersey or
in guerrilla territory, Alfred knows how to integrate
himself into the best social networks and circles
from which he can substantially profit. He also
learns about the flexibility of borders and loyalties
and the importance of being ready to depart at a
moment’s notice. For Alfred, self-preservation is the
order of the day. He serves as an interesting con-
trast to the other characters, who have also reduced
themselves to the business of survival. Mr. Venkate-
san and Dr. Chatterji choose to alienate themselves
from mainstream society while remaining immersed
in memories of the old home, the only vestiges of
the past to endure the border crossing. Such charac-
ters become the target of Mukherjee’s irony as she
portrays them greedily benefiting from the same
social systems that they willingly berate and despise.
On another level, such characters are presented
as foils to the other group of migrants, who approach
survival differently. Maya, Panna, Mrs. Bhave, and
Roashan free themselves from brutal and shat-
tered pasts to recreate themselves in the American
landscape. For them, migration is more than risk
or resignation. It is rebirth and opportunity. These
migrants brave the scorn of their diasporic com-
munities to pursue spiritual and educational goals
that would have been impossible to achieve at home.
They manage with some difficulty to maintain a bal-
ance between two cultural systems. Even the liber-
ated Maya cannot resist the lure of the Periodicals
Room in the library where the foreign newspapers
are located. It is in the Indian newspapers that she is
confronted with a description of herself as the “new
emancipated Indo-American woman.” The irony of
such a woman seeking love in an Indian personals
column emphasizes how strong the bonds of home
can be, even for those who have supposedly left for
good. When she meets Ashoke Mehta, her days of
being a tenant are over; she has made the full circle
and returned to her Indian roots once more, albeit
in a new homeland.
For those who do not have the security of schol-
arships, education, and family connections, the