Bharati Mukherjee
Speaking at the US Ambassador's residence in Israel , June 11, 2004
Born	Bharati Mukherjee ( 1940-07-27 ) July 27, 1940 Calcutta , Bengal Province , British India (present-day Kolkata , West Bengal , India )
Died	January 28, 2017 (2017-01-28) (aged 76) New York City , U.S.
Occupation	Professor novelist essayist short story writer author fiction writer non-fiction writer
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 [ edit ]

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 [ edit ]

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 [ edit ]

Novels [ edit ]

• 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 [ edit ]

• Darkness (1985)
• The Middleman and Other Stories (1988)
• A Father
• The Management of Grief

Memoir [ edit ]

• Days and Nights in Calcutta (1977, with Clark Blaise )

Non-fiction [ edit ]

• 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 [ edit ]

• 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 [ edit ]

• The Tortilla Curtain ? T.C.Boyle

References [ edit ]

Further reading [ edit ]

• 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 [ edit ]

Wikiquote has quotations related to Bharati Mukherjee .

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Bharati Mukherjee .

• India: In Word and Image
• Bharati Mukherjee entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia
• [1]

Interviews [ edit ]

• 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. [ edit ]

• BBC World Service
• A Declaration of Independence
• Further links