Bharati Mukherjee

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Mukherjee in 2004 at the residence of the American Ambassador to Israel

Bharati Mukherjee (born July 27, 1940 in Kolkata , † January 28, 2017 in New York City ) was an Indian-American writer.

Life

Mukherjee was born in Kolkata into a Bengali Brahmin family, i.e. as a member of the highest caste. After Indian independence, the family left the country and went to Europe, but returned in the early 1950s. She attended the Loreto School, a Catholic school run by Irish nuns, and then studied English and ancient Indian cultural studies. She received a BA from the University of Calcutta in 1959 and an MA from the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda in 1961 . She then went to the University of Iowa , where she earned an MFA ( Master of Fine Arts ) in creative writing in 1963 and a doctorate in English and comparative literature in 1969.

In 1963 she married the American writer Clark Blaise and moved with him to Canada in 1966 , where she began her academic career at McGill University . After 14 years in Montreal and Toronto , she returned to the USA in 1980; one reason for this was the publicly denied but perceived increasing xenophobia in Canada. She saw this return as a decisive turning point in her life and career. An invitation to Emory University in Atlanta as writer in residence ended a long break from writing and marked her breakthrough as a short story writer: Within three months she wrote most of the stories that were published in the volume Darkness . She also taught at Skidmore College , Queens College , the City University of New York and the University of California, Berkeley (as distinguished professor ).

Mukherjee saw herself as an American writer, not an Indian emigration writer. She wrote about the loss of home and language, the everyday life of migrants in the USA and violence in American society. She discussed how cultural change and migration can redefine a person's identity. Their main characters (and their names) often refer to the Hindu world of gods.

For her short story band The Middleman and Other Stories she won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1988. Mukherjee was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1993 .

Mukherjee died in 2017 as a result of stress cardiomyopathy .

Works

Novels

  • The Tiger's Daughter (1971)
  • Wife (1975)
  • Jasmine (1989, German title: Jasmine , translated by Eva Müller-Tuckwiller, 1991)
  • The Holder of the World (1993, German title: Die Träne des Grossmoguls , translated by Irene Rumler, 1995)
  • 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

Non-fiction

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

swell

  • Martina Ghosh-Schellhorn: Mukherjee, Bharati . In: Authors Lexicon. Ed. V. Ute Hechtfischer, Renate Hof, Inge Stephan and Flora Veit-Wild. Frankfurt / M. Suhrkamp 2002, p. 371f. ISBN 3518399187
  • Brigitte Scheer-Schäzler: "Wanting America": Bharati Mukherjee and American literature. In: Bharathi Mukherjee: Wanting America. Selected stories. Ed. V. Brigitte Scheer-Schäzler. Stuttgart: Reclam 1995, pp. 105-123. ISBN 3150090164

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Book of Members 1780 – present, Chapter M. (PDF; 1.1 MB) In: American Academy of Arts and Sciences (amacad.org). Retrieved September 30, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Mukherjee, Bharati
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Indian-American writer
DATE OF BIRTH July 27, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Kolkata
DATE OF DEATH January 28, 2017
Place of death New York City