Jasmine (novel)

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Jasmine

Author	Bharati Mukherjee
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Novel
Publisher	Grove Press; 1st ed.
Publication date	1989
Media type	Print (Hardcover, Paperback)
Pages	241 pp
ISBN	ISBN 0-8021-1032-0
Preceded by	The Middleman and Other Stories
Followed by	The Holder of the World

Jasmine (1989) is a novel by Bharati Mukherjee set in the present about a young Indian woman in the United States who, trying to adapt to the American way of life in order to be able to survive, changes identities several times.

1 Plot summary
2 Acclaim
- 2.1 Further reading
3 Book information

[edit] Plot summary

Jasmine's arranged marriage to a young Indian back in their home town ends abruptly when he is killed in a bombing. Still in her teens but already a widow, Jasmine flees India and, after an odyssey, arrives in Florida on a small boat and enters the United States as an illegal immigrant. During her first night in America, which she spends huddled together with some other illegal aliens in a disused motel, she kills the captain of the ship after he has raped her.

Aimlessly walking along a country road not knowing what to do next, Jasmine is picked up by a woman who has helped other illegal immigrants before her. After being given some basic introduction to U.S. society, she sets out to look for a fatherly friend of her dead husband's who is said to be working as a university professor. However, when Jasmine actually meets him she realizes that he holds some menial job and that for years he has been lying about it in his letters back home.

Disillusioned by this experience, Jasmine wanders on and gets a job as a nanny. She falls in love with her employer, and after he and his wife separate, Jasmine has a brief fling with him and soon realizes that it is time she moved on. She ends up in a small town in Iowa, where she attracts the attention of an old woman whose son is a rich and influential man as the town's banker, after Jasmine moves in, he is shot and becomes paralysed. Her live in boyfriend, Bud, would like to have a child by her, so she is artificially inseminated. However, near the end of her pregnancy, having never married Bud, she decides to leave him again and move to California with her former employer, who has custody of his daughter, Jasmine's former charge.

[edit] Acclaim

Selected as a New York Times Book Review notable book of the year.

[edit] Further reading

T. C. Boyle's novel The Tortilla Curtain (1995) is about a Mexican couple living illegally in California and getting into trouble.
Julia Álvarez's novel How the García Girls Lost Their Accents (1992) tells the story of a wealthy Dominican family fleeing their troubled country and starting a new life in New York City.
See Heroines in literature for a list of female protagonists.