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[On her writing agenda:] Make the familiar exotic; the exotic familiar.

Bharati Mukherjee

Ancestral habits of mind can be constricting; they also confer one’s individuality.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Individuality Mind Roots
I have to put down roots where I decide to stay. It wasn’t enough for me to be an expatriate Indian in Canada. If I can’t feel that I can make social, political and emotional commitments to a place, I have to find another place.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Commitment Emotional Roots
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 before I left Calcutta:
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Father Home Writing
What was the function of poetry if not to improve the petty, cautious minds of evasive children?
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Children Mind Poetry
I feel empowered to be a different kind of writer. The longer I stay here, the more light filters into my work. I feel very American. I belong.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Different Filters Light
In India, there are real consequences to inattention; drivers who jeopardize pedestrians can be lynched on the spot.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Inattention India Real
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 a God. It’s about cosmic energy, a little spark of which is inside every individual as the soul.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Energy Father Soul
[On her writing agenda:] Make the familiar exotic; the exotic familiar.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Agendas Exotic Writing
What was the duty of the teacher if not to inspire?
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Duty Inspire Teacher Teaching
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 rules, there was only anarchy.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Growing Running School Up
In traditional Hindu families like ours, men provided and women were provided for. My father was a patriarch and I a pliant daughter.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Daughter Father Mother
Mother Teresas detractors have accused her of overemphasizing Calcuttans destitution and of coercing conversion from the defenseless.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Mother Taken Winning
My first novel, ‘The Tiger’s Daughter,’ embodies the loneliness I felt but could not acknowledge, even to myself, as I negotiated the no man’s land between the country of my past and the continent of my present.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Country Daughter Mother
I had never walked on the street alone when I was growing up in Calcutta, up to age 20. I had never handled money.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Couple Growing Notebook Up
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.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Citizens Government Mean
But, Christ, there’s a difference between exotic and foreign, isn’t there? Exotic means you know how to use your foreignness, or you make yourself a little foreign in order to appear exotic. Real foreign is a little scary, believe me.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Believe Mean Real

[On her writing agenda:] Make the familiar exotic; the exotic familiar.

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[On her writing agenda:] Make the familiar exotic; the exotic familiar.

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Popular Authors

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