Finding who we are in a strange place...

Finding who we are in a strange place...

What does it mean to be an American? To me, it means living in a place where thoughts and opinions can be expressed without repercussions. It is the land of the opportunity, where race and gender differences are supposed to disappear into one united nation. To Jasmine in “Jasmine” by Bharati Mukherjee America is an escape from a predetermined destiny. It is the place that people dream about going to change their fate and take their life into their own hands. Jasmine wants to fulfill her American dream; to not be confined to strict roles, but to make choices and have the power to change our own life; “I know what I don’t want to become” (5). She doesn’t want to become another prophecy, told how to live her life and bound to her restrictive roles and daughter and wife. She wants to come to America to shed the identity she has created in India and to actively change the role that her life is going to take, “experience must be forgotten, or else it will kill” (33).

But how do you leave your birth land without forgetting who you are? Is it possible to live in America and not get caught up in the stereotypes that make us “American?” Jasmine struggles with this loss of identity and evolves ways of dealing with her changing of identity. She says that “there are no harmless, compassionate ways to remake oneself. We murder who we were so we can rebirth ourselves in the images of dreams” (29). Although I found her changes in identity to be an empowering attribute, I know think that she doesn’t know what she wants for herself and in that confusion, she has let others guide her in her journey. When she was first married her husband changed her name, when she came to America her name was changed, when she met her new husband her name changed. Her friends and those people who helped her changed her name. No matter who she was with she could never just be Jyoti, a Hindu woman with dreams.  Her trip to America made her a foreigner in her own skin. She tried to embrace the American lifestyle by accepting American names, but in the process she lost who she came here to become.

Du, her adopted Vietnamese son, implemented different strategies to becoming an American. He actively looked for Vietnamese friends, someone to tie him to his culture and sense of identity. He took his circumstances in Baden and actively pursued a connection with his society. Jasmine on the other hand has not taken an active role in staying connected to her culture; she mentions that she has not talked to another Indian since she left New York. I would like to add here that in the beginning of the book, while talking to Mrs. Ripplemeyer, Jasmine claims that there is no such thing as Indian, she was Hindu, and Indians were an American culture. And yet by the end of the book she is referring to herself as Indian (222). This is interesting because she has stepped so far outside of her culture, she is referring to them with names that are not representative of who they are. She is stripping herself of every tie she has to her culture because according to her, “the language you speak is what you are” (11). She had never heard Du speak his native language, and if he didn’t know how to pronounce something in English he would avoid saying anything at all. He wanted to truly be an American, while Jasmine only wanted to avoid the destiny that was imposed upon her.

Jasmine and Du both had to re-create themselves in the American light. Jasmine consistently shed identities in order to find one that finally fit who she wanted to be. She came to America to escape the restrictive roles in her foreign country and to make peace with the loss of her husband. Her strategy in becoming an American was to be a passive participant of her life. She was put into circumstances that did not allow her to be who she was, and so those identities were lost. But, by the end of the novel her strength and identity were finally being actively pursued by her. She finally thought about what she wants and took an active role in getting it. Although she not makes the transition from Hindu to American smoothly, the two were finally able to mix into a cohesive culture. She should not be expected to move here and immediately identify with American culture, it is process. She should not have to strip her cultural identity in order to become an American. We live in a place of diversity and freedom for a reason; sometimes it just takes longer for some of us to realize that we can be who were are, because we are only ones who knows exactly who that is.