Bharati Mukherjee

“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 promises of its dream to all its citizens equally,” Bharati Mukherjee wrote in “Mother Jones” in 1997. Born in India, Mukherjee explored the culture clashes of her immigrant characters in “The Middleman and Other Stories” (1988), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction, and novels such as “Jasmine” (1989), a favorite on high school and college reading lists. Other notable works include “The Tiger's Daughter” (1971), “The Holder of the World” (1993) and “Desirable Daughters” (2002). Mukherjee taught at McGill University, Skidmore College, Queens College and City University of New York before becoming a professor in the English department at the University of California, Berkeley. Her last novel, “Miss New India,” was published in 2011. Updated 2018