Bharati Mukherjee (born July 27, 1940) is an Indian-born American writer who is currently a professor in the department of English at the University of California, Berkeley. Read full biography of Bharati Mukherjee →
In Hindu societies, especially overprotected patriarchal families like mine, daughters are not at all desirable. They are trouble. And a mother who... →
I'm very moved by chaos theory, and that sense of energy. That quantum physics. We don't really, in Hindu tradition, have a father figure of... →
One of the early tip-offs to me about the enormous changes that were going on with being in a Bangalore house, home, where the young woman from a... →
I flew into a small airport surrounded by cornfields and pastures, ready to carry out the two commands my father had written out for me the night... →
I had a 2-week courtship with a fellow student in the fiction workshop in Iowa and a 5-minute wedding in a lawyer's office above the coffee shop... →
I am a naturalized U.S. citizen, which means that, unlike native-born citizens, I had to prove to the U.S. government that I merited citizenship.
In India, there are real consequences to inattention; drivers who jeopardize pedestrians can be lynched on the spot.
I am an American, not an Asian-American. My rejection of hyphenation has been called race treachery, but it is really a demand that America deliver... →
The picture of Mother Teresa that I remember from my childhood is of a short, sari-wearing woman scurrying down a red gravel path between manicured... →
In traditional Hindu families like ours, men provided and women were provided for. My father was a patriarch and I a pliant daughter. The... →
Bengalis love to celebrate their language, their culture, their politics, their fierce attachment to a city that has been famously dying for more... →
Growing up in an old-fashioned Bengali Hindu family and going to a convent school run by stern Irish nuns, I was brought up to revere rules. Without... →
I had never walked on the street alone when I was growing up in Calcutta, up to age 20. I had never handled money. You know, there was always a... →
Bharati Mukherjee (born July 27, 1940) is an Indian-born American writer who is currently a professor in the department of English at the University of California, Berkeley.