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Bharati Mukherjee
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This interview with Bharati Mukherjee was conducted by Christine McQuade via e-mail in 2005.
| S&W3: |
You propose four key terms, or narratives, in this piece: expatriation, exile, immigration, and repatriation. How have your perspectives
on these terms changed since your essay was published in 1999? What, if any, additional narratives—personal and public—have you observed?
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| B.M.: |
My perspective on the four terms I proposed and defined in my essay "Imagining Homelands" have not changed. If anything,
my conviction of their usefulness in discourses on contemporary diasporic literature and on immigrant U.S. literature has deepened.
I expect the future to provide us with a larger body of English-language fiction in the narrative of repatriation. I think two distinct
subnarratives of repatriation will emerge and enrich American literature.
One subnarrative will concern itself with the repossession of former "Spanish homelands" by Latino border-crossers (documented and undocumented)
and their descendants, as told by the English-proficient, U.S.-born and/or U.S-raised generation. To date, the majority of novels about the harsh
experiences of Latino border-crossers that have elicited mainstream attention appear to have been written by sympathetic European-Americans. Susan
Straight's Highwire Moon would be a good example.
The other subnarrative of repatriation will come out of the very recent phenomenon of the voluntary return to the country of one's origin by
significant numbers of professionally successful, affluent, naturalized U.S. citizens in their late thirties to mid-forties and their families.
This phenomenon is most evident in the South Asian American and Chinese American communities. The experience of repatriation is still too fresh
for it to have surfaced as a body of literature.
I also see the potential for additional subnarratives within the narrative of expatriation. In the last century, for example, multinational
companies created a community of what I call "the rooted cosmopolitan"; that is, expatriates with a corporate identity and corporate "homeland,"
at ease in the city of their posting for the duration of that posting. And in this century, especially in this period of speeded-up globalization
when U.S. companies source out jobs to developing nations, the Internet is collapsing conventional concepts of territorial, temporal, and spatial
borders.
In the wake of 9/11 and the emergence of a handful of post-9/11 novels, we can speculate on a future additional subnarrative in the narrative of
exile that will accommodate the experience of, and literature about, the community of "sleeper agents."
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| S&W3: |
Assimilation is another frequently used term in discussions of America as a nation of immigrants. Stanley Crouch, in his essay
"Goose-Loose Blues for the Melting Pot" [included in Seeing & Writing, 4th ed., as well as
Reinventing the Melting Pot (Basic Books, 2004)], writes, "Assimilation is not the destruction of one's true identity. It is not,
as advocates of separatism would teach us, a matter of domination and subordination, nor the conquest of one culture by another. On the contrary,
it's about the great intermingling of cultural influence that comprises the American condition: the fresh ideas brought forward in our folklore,
our entertainment, our humor, our athletic contests, our workplaces, even our celebrity trials and political scandals." Could you offer a
response to Crouch's statement and your thoughts on the term assimilation?
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| B.M.: |
Ten or twelve years ago, assimilation was a nonpoliticized noun in the immigration discourse and could be used loosely to describe the
basic adjustments, such as acceptance of U.S. laws and Constitutional values, made by immigrants. Among the multiple meanings of the word in
nonpolitical usage are (1) incorporation of foreign matter, which is the meaning Crouch seems to favor, and (2) uncritical acceptance and
adopting the national culture as formulated by the mainstream, which is the meaning both the multiculturists and the traditional Americanists
employ in debating ideals of immigrant conduct. I think the word assimilation has lost its usefulness to illuminate contemporary immigrant
psychological transactions and the nation's cultural flux.
As I have indicated in my essay, the word I prefer to use in order to describe precisely the processes of fusion and two-way transformation t
hat I idealize is mongrelization. To me, mongrelization suggests a spontaneous, spirited union of disparate entities that produces an unpredictable
result. I want to neutralize the negative associations of that word. To me a mongrel culture is a healthy culture.
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| S&W3: |
What are your visions and hopes for America, as a "place" and an "idea"?
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| B.M.: |
My "idea" of America is that it is a stage for the drama of self-invention. In the India in which I grew up, in the Western European countries I lived in as a child, and in Canada, where I spent fourteen years as an adult in the late sixties and through the seventies, one's identity was immutable, derived from such factors as one's inherited race, ethnicity, religion, and mother tongue. The "idea" of America encourages inclusivity. An immigrant who shares the collective values, rights, and duties enshrined in the Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution and who calls herself American is an American. The sovereignty of the individual, the notion that every citizen constitutes a "majority of one," and the U. S. Constitution's guarantees of civil liberties have my deepest loyalty. My hope is that, when civil liberties are abused, individual Americans will exercise their right to vote in such a way as to safeguard the promises of the Constitution.
As "place," the United States has changed drastically through the nineties. Nonwhite (documented and undocumented) immigration has increased. Latinos now outnumber African Americans as the largest minority. In states such as California and New York, whites are no longer in the majority. Nowadays immigration and ethnicity have replaced race at the center of our national discourse. My grandchildren will probably live in a nonwhite America.
On 9/11 we were bombed by legal aliens with lapsed visas who used our national myth ("Give us your tired, your hungry . . . ") against us. 9/11 has made immigration a divisive national issue. Right-wing radio talk shows have mobilized trident support for the closing of national borders.
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| S&W3: |
Can you describe the process of writing this essay? What were some of the most important compositional choices you made? How important were the processes of drafting and revising?
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| B.M.: |
This essay was originally written as a lecture to be heard, not read. The lecture was one of five in a series on "exile" at
the New York Public Library. The other lecturers in the series were [written by] Edward Said, Eva Hoffman, Andre Aciman, and
Charles Simic. I wrote my lecture in two sittings. I needed to find a way of showing emigrants' nuanced attitudes to dislocation.
"Exile" didn't accurately describe me. I am someone who has put down roots in America. I didn't begin writing my lecture until I
had come up with the structure: the identification and exploration of the four large narratives within the immigrant experience.
The original played to the ear. At the podium, I went off-script occasionally to illustrate arguments. When the series of lectures
was published as an anthology titled Letter of Transit, I had to turn the lecture into a text to be read. I had to incorporate my
off-the-cuff explanations and elaborations, sharpen phrases, tighten sentences, and make the punctuation more formal.
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| S&W3: |
You are primarily a fiction writer but have composed numerous works of nonfiction as well. How does your writing process in each genre compare?
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| B.M.: |
I approach nonfiction very differently from fiction. When I am writing fiction, I want to address "issues" very indirectly; I want to
dramatize and humanize them. Through my minor characters and my protagonist, I want to present multiple perspectives. In an essay, I want
to state my position directly and clearly and present my arguments as forcefully as I can.
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| S&W3: |
What is your earliest recollection of writing? of reading?
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| B.M.: |
We Bengalis come from a culture of reading. My mother was a compulsive reader and encouraged me to read and write fiction. I am told by my relatives that I could read well at age three. I know I loved immersing myself in novels as a very young child. In those days, European novels, especially Russian novels, were available in cheap Bangla translation from roadside vendors. I remember being entranced by Dostoyevsky and crying my eyes out over Gorki.
I started writing a novel, in English, about a group of three children when I was eight or nine. The children had stumbled on a mystery and were to solve it. I was in England with my family, going to school, learning English, reading a book a day from the neighborhood library. I was a huge fan of Enid Blyton's "The Five Finder-Outers" series. I finished three chapters of that novel. By the age of twelve, I had published a short story in my school magazine, "Palm Leaves." This story was from the point of view of Julius Caesar as he is about to be done in by Brutus. It had started as an exercise in an English class.
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| S&W3: |
How did you decide to become a writer?
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| B.M.: |
I just knew from about age three that I was a writer. I don't know how or why, but I knew. |
| S&W3: |
What suggestions do you have for students who "hate writing"?
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| B.M.: |
Get over your fear of the blank screen. Write for fun, not just to complete assignments. Try writing short personal sketches in a very colloquial style. Read the day's newspaper, find an incident or an issue that fascinates you or that enrages you, then write up your reactions to it.
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| S&W3: |
What should every student of writing read or do?
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| B.M.: |
Doesn't matter what; just keep reading indiscriminately. We learn from bad writing as well as good writing.
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