Bharati Mukherjee
Bharati Mukherjee | |
|---|---|
 Speaking at the US Ambassador's residence in Israel, June 11, 2004 | |
| Born | Bharati Mukherjee July 27, 1940 Calcutta, Bengal Province, British India (present-day Kolkata, West Bengal, India) |
| Died | January 28, 2017 (aged 76) New York City, U.S. |
| Occupation |
|
| Nationality | Indian American Canadian |
| Genre | Novels, short stories, essays, travel literature, journalism. |
| Subjects | Post-colonial Anglophone fiction, Asian American fiction, autobiographical narratives, memoirs, American culture, immigration history, reformation and nationhood in the '90s, multiculturalism vs. mongrelization, fiction writing, autobiography writing, and the form and theory of fiction. |
| Notable works | Jasmine |
| Spouse | Clark Blaise |
Bharati Mukherjee (July 27, 1940 – January 28, 2017) was an Indian American-Canadian writer and professor emerita in the department of English at the University of California, Berkeley. She was the author of a number of novels and short story collections, as well as works of nonfiction.[1]
Early life and education
Of Indian Hindu Bengali Brahmin origin, Mukherjee was born in present-day Kolkata, West Bengal, India during British rule. She later travelled with her parents to Europe after Independence, only returning to Calcutta in the early 1950s. There she attended the Loreto School. She received her B.A. from the University of Calcutta in 1959 as a student of Loreto College, and subsequently earned her M.A. from Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda in 1961.[2] She next travelled to the United States to study at the University of Iowa. She received her M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1963 and her PhD in 1969 from the department of Comparative Literature.[3]
Career
After more than a decade living in Montreal and Toronto in Canada, Mukherjee and her husband, Clark Blaise returned to the United States. She wrote of the decision in "An Invisible Woman," published in a 1981 issue of Saturday Night. Mukherjee and Blaise co-authored Days and Nights in Calcutta (1977). They also wrote the 1987 book, The Sorrow and the Terror regarding the Air India Flight 182 tragedy. [4]
In addition to writing many works of fiction and non-fiction, Mukherjee taught at McGill University, Skidmore College, Queens College, and City University of New York before joining the faculty at UC Berkeley.
In 1988 Mukherjee won the National Book Critics Circle Award- for her collection The Middleman and Other Stories.[5] In a 1989 interview with Ameena Meer, Mukherjee stated that she considered herself an American writer, and not an Indian expatriate writer.[6]
Mukherjee died due to complications of rheumatoid arthritis and takotsubo cardiomyopathy on January 28, 2017, in Manhattan at the age of 76.[7] She was survived by her husband and son. Her other son, Bart, predeceased her in 2015.[8]
Works
Novels
- The Tiger's Daughter (1971)
- Wife (1975)
- Jasmine (1989)
- The Holder of the World (1993)
- Leave It to Me (1997)
- Desirable Daughters (2002)
- The Tree Bride (2004)
- Miss New India (2011)
Short story collections
- Darkness (1985)
- The Middleman and Other Stories (1988)
- A Father
- The Management of Grief
Memoir
- Days and Nights in Calcutta (1977, with Clark Blaise)
Non-fiction
- The Sorrow and the Terror: The Haunting Legacy of the Air India Tragedy (1987, with Clark Blaise)
- Political Culture and Leadership in India (1991)
- Regionalism in Indian Perspective (1992)
Awards and honors
- 1988: National Book Critics Circle Award (The Middleman and Other Stories).
- Mukherjee was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters (L.H.D.) from Whittier College in 2013.[9]
Related novels
References
- ^ "Holders of the Word: An Interview with Bharati Mukherjee". Tina Chen and S.X. Goudie, University of California, Berkeley]
- ^ "Arts and Culture: Bharati Mukherjee: Her Life and Works". PBS, Interview with Bill Moyers, February 5, 2003
- ^ "Clark Blaise and Bharati Mukherjee". Toronto Star, June 10, 2011
- ^ Gangdev, Srushti (June 22, 2023). "Most Canadians don't know about the bombing of Air India, the worst terrorist attack in Canada's history". Canadian Broadcasting.
- ^ "Bharati Mukherjee Runs the West Coast Offense". Dave Weich, Powells Interview (April 2002)
- ^ Meer, Amanda http://bombsite.com/issues/29/articles/1264 Archived May 14, 2013, at the Wayback Machine Fall 1989. Retrieved May 20, 2013
- ^ "Novelist Bharati Mukherjee passes away". India Live Today. February 1, 2017. Archived from the original on February 4, 2017. Retrieved February 1, 2017.
- ^ Grimes, William (February 1, 2017). "Bharati Mukherjee, Writer of Immigrant Life, Dies at 76". The New York Times. Retrieved February 4, 2017.
- ^ "Honorary Degrees | Whittier College". www.whittier.edu. Retrieved January 28, 2020.
Further reading
- Abcarian, Richard and Marvin Klotz. "Bharati Mukherjee." In Literature: The Human Experience, 9th edition. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2006: 1581–1582.
- Alter, Stephen and Wimal Dissanayake (ed.). "Nostalgia by Bharati Mukherjee." The Penguin Book of Modern Indian Short Stories. New Delhi, Middlesex, New York: Penguin Books, 1991: 28–40.
- Kerns-Rustomji, Roshni. "Bharati Mukherjee." In The Heath Anthology of American Literature, 5th edition, Vol. E. Paul Lauter and Richard Yarborough (eds.). New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2006: 2693–2694.
- Majithia, Sheetal. "Of Foreigners and Fetishes: A Reading of Recent South Asian American Fiction", Samar 14: The South Asian American Generation (Fall/Winter 2001): 52–53.
- Maxey, Ruth (2019). Understanding Bharati Mukherjee. University of South Carolina Press. ISBN 978-1-64336-000-3. OCLC 1076500541.
- Maxey, Ruth (2012). South Asian Atlantic literature, 1970-2010. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 9780748641888. JSTOR 10.3366/j.ctt1wf4cbs.
- New, W. H., ed. "Bharati Mukerjee." In Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002: 763–764.
- Selvadurai, Shyam (ed.). "Bharati Mukherjee: The Management of Grief." Story-Wallah: A Celebration of South Asian Fiction. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2005: 91–108.
External links
Interviews
- Beatrice Interview 1997
- A conversation with Bharati Mukherjee (February 2003)
- Global India Newswire interview (January 2012)
- Meer, Ameena: Bharati Mukherjee. Archived May 14, 2013, at the Wayback Machine (Fall 1989)
Misc.
- 1940 births
- 2017 deaths
- American Hindus
- 20th-century American novelists
- 21st-century American novelists
- 20th-century Canadian novelists
- 21st-century Canadian novelists
- Indian emigrants to the United States
- Bengali writers
- Writers from California
- Canadian women novelists
- University of California, Berkeley faculty
- American novelists of Indian descent
- American women novelists
- American women writers of Indian descent
- American people of Bengali descent
- Loreto College, Kolkata alumni
- University of Calcutta alumni
- Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda alumni
- American women short story writers
- Iowa Writers' Workshop alumni
- Iowa Writers' Workshop faculty
- Indian postmodern writers
- Bengali Hindus
- Canadian women short story writers
- American short story writers of Asian descent
- American writers of Indian descent
- 20th-century Canadian women writers
- 21st-century Canadian women writers
- 20th-century Canadian short story writers
- 21st-century Canadian short story writers
- American academics of Indian descent
- 20th-century American short story writers
- 21st-century American short story writers
- 21st-century Indian women writers
- 20th-century Indian women writers
- Writers from Kolkata
- 20th-century Indian novelists
- 21st-century Indian novelists
- Women writers from West Bengal
- Novelists from West Bengal
- Novelists from Iowa
- 20th-century American women writers
- 21st-century American women writers
- Deaths from cardiomyopathy
- Deaths from arthritis
- Indian scholars