and Karen Radell argue that an interest to chart
the trajectory of immigrant women’s constant and
necessary remaking and refashioning of the self
pervades Mukherjee’s later fiction, noting: “[T]he
women in Mukherjee’s stories are seen deep in this
process of being reborn, of refashioning them-
selves, so deep that they can neither extricate
themselves nor reverse the process, nor, once it has
begun, would they wish to” (12). Mukherjee’s in-
sistence on the agency available to the immigrant
to take control of her own fate, a theme echoed
even in her historical novel The Holder of the World
(1993), has encouraged John K. Hoppe to remark:
“She is plainly disinterested in the preservation of
cultures, the hallowing of tradition, obligations to
the past.... Rather, her current work forwards a
distinction between ‘pioneers’ and pitiable others
for whom attachments to personal and cultural
pasts foreclose possibilities” (137).
With Leave It to Me (1997), Mukherjee took aim
at the 1960s and 1970s American counterculture,
as her heroine Debby/Devil/Dee navigates natural
disasters, war and the abandonment by, and search
for, her parents. Desirable Daughters (2002) and
Tree Bride (2004) reinforce Mukherjee’s interest
in the precipitous situations that occur when en-
trenched and vaulted cultural mores and practices
come together when East meets West, most nota-
bly in marriage. Reviewing Desirable Daughters,
Ramlal Agarwal writes: “Desirable Daughters deals
with America and its liberties, individualism and
money power and with India and its gods, ghosts,
and curious social practices” (87). Juxtaposing
cultures and traditions, geographic locations and
socioeconomic realities, Mukherjee appears to
insist upon the differences among cultures, while
remaining skeptical of a blanket multiculturalism
that would erase them under the banner of inclu-
sion and hyphenated identity. Mukherjee unequiv-
ocally makes such a point, as she writes: “I choose
to describe myself on my own terms, as an Ameri-
can, rather than as an Asian-American.... Reject-
ing hyphenation is my refusal to categorize the
cultural landscape into a center and its peripheries;
it is to demand that the American nation deliver
the promises of its dream and its Constitution to
all its citizens equally” (“American Dreamer” 34).
Thus considering herself as strictly an “American”
writer, Mukherjee forces readers and critics alike to
recognize the capaciousness of such a label, to rec-
ognize the multiethnic makeup of the nation and
the plurality of voices that demand to be heard
within its cultural space.Bibliography
Agarwal, Ramlal. Review of Bharati Mukherjee’s De-
sirable Daughters. World Literature Today 77, nos.
3–4 (2003): 86–87.
Fakrul, Alam. Bharati Mukherjee. New York: Twayne,
1996.
Gabriel, Sharmani P. “ ‘Between Mosaic and Melting
Pot’: Negotiating Multiculturalism and Cultural
Citizenship in Bharati Mukherjee’s Narratives of
Diaspora.” May 2005. Postcolonial Text 1, no. 2.
Available online. URL: http://www.pkp.ubc.ca/
pocol/. Downloaded November 19, 2006.
Hoppe, John K. “The Technological Hybrid as Post
American: Cross-Cultural Genetics in Jasmine.”
MELUS 24, no. 4 (Winter 1999): 137–156.
Mukherjee, Bharati. “American Dreamer.” Mother
Jones 22, no. 1 (Jan/Feb. 1997): 32–35.
Nelson, Emmanuel S., ed. Bharati Mukherjee: Critical
Perspectives. New York: Garland, 1993.
Sant-Wade, Arvindra, and Karen Marguerite Radell.
“Refashioning the Self: Immigrant Women in
Bharati Mukherjee’s New World.” Studies in Short
Fiction 29, no. 1 (Winter 1992): 11–17.
Zach WeirMura, David (1952– )
Third-generation Japanese-American poet, cre-
ative nonfiction writer, critic, playwright, and per-
formance artist David Mura received a B.A. from
Grinnell College, and later an M.F.A. in creative
writing from Vermont College. He has taught at
the University of Minnesota, St. Olaf College, the
Loft, Hamline University and the University of Or-
egon. He also cofounded and served as director of
the Asian American Renaissance, an Asian-Ameri-
can arts organization.
Mura grew up in a primarily Jewish neighbor-
hood in Minnesota away from centers of Asian-Mura, David 203