walk between immersion in American culture
while studying for a Ph.D. in New York and her
love for and obligation to her husband when he
visits from their home north of Bombay, India.
These two stories address quite different concerns,
but both demonstrate the author’s unwavering
interest in the complexity of human relations and
the development of full-fledged characters capa-
ble of taking action and weighing consequences.
Movement is key: While always interested in the
middle position of the person caught between ob-
ligations, lovers, and cultures, Mukherjee’s stories
render this tenuous space as constantly in flux, for
both better and worse.
In an interesting move, Mukherjee redefines
the possibilities for the middle position in “Loose
Ends,” “Fighting for the Rebound,” and “Father-
ing.” The male narrators of these stories are all
white Americans forced to re-examine their sub-
ject position in light of an American society re-
shaped and, arguably, driven by the expansion
and vivacity of immigrant cultures and the reper-
cussions of neo-imperialist U.S. foreign and eco-
nomic policy. As the narrator in “Loose Ends,” a
returned Vietnam veteran and murderer-for-hire,
asks: “Where did America go? I want to know....
Back when me and my buddies were barricading
the front door, who left the back door open?” (48),
Mukherjee challenges the reader to arrive at any
stable definition of just what “America” is, just
what makes an “American.” With stories such as
“Danny’s Girls,” the reader knows that such labels
must remain expansive enough to cover not only
the clichés and rhetoric of patriotism but also the
exploitation of immigrants and the working poor,
not to mention the thriving market for mail-order
brides from Asia.
In “Orbiting,” the Italian-American narrator
Renata remarks upon the vastly different ways in
which one can view America when its cultural
logic becomes refracted by the lens of immigrant
experience, in this case her Afghani boyfriend Ro:
“When I’m with Ro I feel I am looking at America
through the wrong end of a telescope. He makes
it sound like a police state, with sudden raids, pa-
pers, detention centers, deportations, and torture
and death waiting in the wings” (66). With The
Middleman and Other Stories, Mukherjee provides
the reader with just such a telescope; however, it is
an instrument with both a far reach and markedly
sharp focus.Bibliography
Mukherjee, Bharati. The Middleman and Other Sto-
ries. New York: Grove Press, 1988.
Zach WeirMin, Anchee (1957– )
Born in Shanghai, China, Anchee Min was the old-
est of four children. Her parents were both educa-
tors: her mother an elementary school teacher and
her father an instructor of technical drawing at the
Shanghai Textile Institute. In 1967 her parents were
accused of being “bourgeois intellectuals” and as a
result lost their apartment. By 1971 they had also
lost their jobs and had turned to manual labor to
support the family.
During the Cultural Revolution of China, Min
threw herself wholeheartedly into the dissemina-
tion of Maoist thoughts, becoming a leader of
the Little Red Guards at her elementary school.
A key moment from this period, related painfully
by Min in Red Azalea, occurred when, in order to
show her commitment to the Communist Party,
she denounced a favorite teacher as an enemy of
Communism.
At the age of 17, Min participated in the massive
movement of urban youths into the countryside
to work with the peasantry. In 1974 she joined a
convoy of young student-workers and moved to a
farm near the East China Sea, where she spent the
next two years engaged in strenuous farm labor.
All of this was part of the Communist Party’s plan
to overcome divisions between the city and the
countryside while instilling the values of manual
labor in middle-class students. Min presents a poi-
gnant account of these and other experiences dur-
ing the Cultural Revolution in her highly regarded
memoir Red Azalea (1994).
In 1976 a talent scout seeking actors for one of
Madame Mao’s movies spotted Min and brought
her to Shanghai to audition for the lead role.Min, Anchee 191