Diasporic Identity and Family Relationships in the Works of Bharati Mukherjee

Abstract

This paper examines the interrelationship between diasporic identity and family relationships in five novels by Bharati Mukherjee: The Tiger's Daughter, Wife, Jasmine, Desirable Daughters, and The Tree Bride. Drawing on diaspora theory and postcolonial conceptions of hybridity, the study argues that these two themes are not separable concerns in Mukherjee's fiction but mutually constitutive dimensions of a single exploration of the immigrant condition. The constraints upon the immigrant self are enacted primarily through the roles and expectations of familial life, so that the transformation of identity requires the transformation, and sometimes the rupture, of familial bonds. Through close textual analysis, the paper traces a clear trajectory across Mukherjee's career: from an early representation of diasporic identity as a predicament of estrangement and potential destruction, through the affirmative celebration of self-creation in Jasmine, to a mature synthesis in the later novels that reconciles transformation with the claims of ancestral continuity. The analysis gives particular attention to the gendered dimensions of this trajectory, arguing that Mukherjee's female protagonists bear a distinctive double burden, expected to preserve tradition while adapting to modernity, and that their varied fates map the full range of outcomes the diasporic condition makes possible. The paper concludes that Mukherjee's contribution lies in her reconception of the immigrant as an agent of transformation rather than a victim of exile, and in her sustained attention to women's agency in reconstructing both self and family.