Diasporic Suffering and Gender Oppression in Bharati Mukherjee's Jasmine

Abstract

The present paper represents diaporic suffering and gender oppression in Bharati Mukherjee's Jasmine. In other word, Mukherjee expresses immigrants' bitter diasporic experiences, such as homelessness; displacement, nostalgia and identity fragmentation. Furthermore, Mukherjee presents her own struggle to assert identity throughout her autobiographical writings, first as an exile from India, then as an Indian expatriate in Canada, and finally as an immigrant in the United States of America. On the other hand, Mukherjee asserted that a woman should not be passive and submissive in  an alien land. In fact, a woman especially who immigrated should overcome all obstacles that she encountered and be confident of herself. The protagonist Jasmine encounters the pain with courage. Jasmine searches  for freedom through  change  and  flexible identities. Rather, Jasmine sets her texts against the traditional rule of Indian society.

   Further, Mukherjee exposes Jasmine's bitter life when Jasmine expresses that there is no difference between the complexity of both Third World strategies of survival and the liberality of First World. Rather, Jasmine has a sense of  ambivalance, she becomes between patriarchal Indian culture and Western anxieties because in fact she is nationally foreign.

  Moreover, the writer intends to choose this novel  that is connected closely to marginalized nation because at the beginning, Indian history writers can only narrate from elitists who are somehow far away from the reality.