Jasmine Class Discussion #1


Jasmine
Bharati Mukherjee
Chapters 1-17
Bharati Mukherjee
-          Born: July 27, 1940 – Died: Jan 28, 2017
-          Born in Kolkata, West Bengal, India
-          Attended the Loreto School in Europe, going back to U of Calcutta in early 1950’s
-          M.F.A from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop in 1963
o   Big program for creative writers
§  Very successful, 17 Pulizter Prize winners came from here as of 2018
·       Philip Roth & Flannery O’Connor
o   Met her husband, Clark Blaise, here
§  Born in Fargo, North Dakota and attended Denison University and U of Iowa
-          Her fiction all revolves around the internal culture clashes of her immigrant characters
 Jasmine
1)     What is the significance of the name, Jasmine?
a.      And how does it compare to that of Jyoti?

2)     What is Jasmine’s connection to India?

3)     How does Jasmine view the concept of identity?
a.      Maybe look at page 92 for some idea, but that’s just me.

4)     Going along with this, how are people’s names used to characterize them?
a.      (i.e. Bud – a humble Midwestern farmer, Half-Face – the self-explanatory predator, etc.)

5)     There is a nostalgia about Lahare that Jasmine’s parents and family hold. This differs greatly from her opinion. This is a common theme in the novels we have read so far in this class. What do you make of this? Does this complicate what we have learned, or does it simply reinforce the ideas that we have already read?

6)     Let’s Explore: how does the notion of control work in this novel? Or, how does Jasmine see “control;” does it mean power and freedom, or is it baggage?  
a.      In India, Jyoti had as much power as a peasant girl from a “feudal” society could.
b.     Coming to America, she was forced into a situation of powerlessness and total control.
c.      With Bud, she controls the marriage.
d.     On page 44, she has control over the light switch

7)     There are three moments that a dead dog is mentioned. Once in the opening chapter, once in her recounting of her life in India, and once on the plane. What do you think the purpose of this image is?

8)     How does the concept of fate work in this novel? Is it proving true or not? Is it inevitable that it will come true, regardless of her living in India or America?


9)     Do you think the image of a dead dog relates to her “fate” as told to her by the astrologer in Chapter 1? What about the multiple scars she has (all of which inflicted upon her)? Are these at all related to her so-far depressing narrative?

10)  What is your definition of integration? What does it look like? What are the varying degrees of it? With everything described below, along with your definition, is integration possible, or even necessary, or is the wrong question being asked entirely?
a.      We see how Jasmine is treated in Iowa.
b.     We see how Taylor talks to her when she simply explains basic Hindi beliefs to him and of how different groups view her, whether it be his friends or the women in her Harlem apartment.
c.      We are given insight into her life before coming to the US.
d.     And she tells us the reason why she went to America in the first place.
Works Sited
-          https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/01/books/bharati-mukherjee-dead-author-jasmine.html
-          https://www.npr.org/2017/02/06/513711541/remembering-bharati-mukherjee-an-indian-born-american-writer


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Spiral of Time in Potiki

Potiki is a story focusing on a Maori community fighting to maintain their autonomy from hungry land developers who are desperately trying to coerce the Maori people off of their sacred land. The author, Patricia Grace, constructs the story through a patchwork of memories, where different events, different times, and different viewpoints come together in like a mosaic.   Grace disrupts the linear narrative and describes time in a cyclical way, a never-ending spiral. Rather than segregating time the “past time” of the ancestors from the “present time” of the community, there is a new way of describing time. I found “now-time” to be a fascinating concept, where there’s this spiral temporality where past and future time are narratively experienced. The concept of “sacred time” was more challenging to understand, where the narrative of Christ and the and the ancient myth of Mäui align.   The spiral, like kowhaiwhai, signifies repetition with a difference. Toko...
Read more

Potiki literary analysis

In comparing  Things Fall Apart  and  Potiki,  it is evident that each culture, and even individuals within a culture, define home differently. Many of the characters in  Potiki  rely upon the geography of New Zealand to define home. Hemi particularly views home through this lens.              Hemi first demonstrates his commitment to the land when he loses his job. While he is initially disappointed, he quickly resolves that “He’d always known that one day he would return to the land, and that the land would support them all again," (60). He trusts that the land will provide for his family, which is exceptional given that he has recently become unemployed. Additionally, Hemi expresses the importance of protecting his own land. He reflects, “These days people were looking more to their land” because “They had to if they didn’t want to be wiped off the face of the earth,” (60). He then point...
Read more

Potiki Reading

          From the beginning of her novel, Patricia Grace makes her priorities clear: She will be telling the stories that have been untold, and more importantly, unheard. Potiki  begins with the story of the carver, a master storyteller, who places the history of his people in his craft. Like Grace, he is "Seeking out and exposing the figures that were hidden" (7). However, his final story is left uncompleted, because "[It] is not yet known" (10). With the death of the carver, the narrative begins, and the reader is thrown into a somewhat tumultuous world.           Unlike Things Fall Apart , there is a strong emphasis on the "hidden" nature of the story. Roimata's internal conflict is not nearly as clear as Okonkwo's. In fact, it feels almost unknowable. "As a child I lived with my father in a railway house with a small, dark kitchen... Our window framed the flying windows, flying eyes, of trains which riveted the senses, carryin...
Read more