The Mukherjee Controversy

This is a similar occurrence for Jasmine after she comes to America from Punjab, India. In the novel Jasmine, by Bharati Mukherjee, people don’t seem to see Jasmine as a threat, but they also can’t get their minds around someone being from Asia. There are several little things that Jasmine mentions, that are difficult for the people around her to comprehend about her previous life, such as her name. She says that when “[Mother Ripplemeyer looked] at the name in my passport and sees “Jyo-” at the beginning and decided that her mouth was not destined to make those sounds” (p. 16). This is a similar occurrence for my Dad’s whole side of the family, for few people can seem to pronounce the surname, Shintaku. A close pronunciation that we’ve heard - as I mentioned in a previous blog - is shiitake, the mushroom. Quite a few people who don’t have nay concept of Asia have a hard time with these minor but yet, to them, somewhat strange and uncomfortable little details, like a name.

Another occurrence that Jasmine had in the novel, but my grandmother didn’t, was in speaking of her parents or her country of origin. Jasmine says in Mukherjee’s novel that “if [she talks] about India, [she talks] about [her] parents” (p. 16), where as I can hardly ever remember my grandma ever speaking of either Japan, the camp, or her parents. Like my grandma, Jasmine knew that she and “to be careful about nearly everything [she says]” (p. 16). Where as it was the traumatic times during the Second World War that changed the older generations of my family’s beliefs and ways of thinking, it was out of awkwardness and of situations of uncomfortably that made Jasmine conscious.

With both my family’s and Jasmine’s integration into American society there came a great deal of lose of cultural identity in the decline of ever having the original language spoken or learned again, as well as the change from an Asian name to an American name. For instance, Jasmine’s name used to be Jyoti but she later changed it to Jane and eventually Jasmine. But my family, however, went one step further to only having the Japanese last name at birth until my generation came along with Japanese middle names. Both stories have lost parts of their cultural identities but both have gained in new ones. Whether they were exciting or not is left up to their interpretation in the journey of how they acquired their new identities. As well as the question of whether these new and different identities are good or bad.