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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

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 duty of the teacher if not to inspire?
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Duty Inspire Teacher Teaching
My life has gotten a little more complicated than my ability to describe it. That used to be the definition of madness, now it’s just continuous overload.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Definitions Littles Madness
In India, there are real consequences to inattention; drivers who jeopardize pedestrians can be lynched on the spot.
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Inattention India Real
Ancestral habits of mind can be constricting; they also confer one’s individuality.
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Individuality Mind Roots
The picture of Mother Teresa that I remember from my childhood is of a short, sari-wearing woman scurrying down a red gravel path between manicured lawns.
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Childhood Mother Two
You know, there was always a couple of bodyguards behind me, who took care if I wanted… I needed pencils for school, I needed a notebook, they were the ones who were taking out the money. I was constantly guarded.
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Moment Needed School Taking
What was the function of poetry if not to improve the petty, cautious minds of evasive children?
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Children Mind Poetry
I’m sorry, this is too much work, I’m going to try applying for call center jobs. The pay is better.’
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Better Pay Sorry Work
In the context of lost causes, Mother Teresa took on battles she knew she could win. Taken together, it seems to me, the criticisms of her work do not undermine or topple her overall achievement.
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Battles Criticisms Mother Overall Toppel
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
You see for me, America is an idea. It is a stage for transformation. I felt when I came to Iowa City from Calcutta that suddenly I could be a new person . . . What America offers me is romanticism and hope . . . Suddenly, I found myself in a country where
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Cities Country Iowa
[On her writing agenda:] Make the familiar exotic; the exotic familiar.
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Agendas Exotic Writing
Through my fiction, I make mainstream readers see the new Americans as complex human beings, not as just The Other.
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Fiction Mainstream Reader
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
Mother Teresas detractors have accused her of overemphasizing Calcuttans destitution and of coercing conversion from the defenseless.
BHARATI MUKHERJEE

Mother Taken Winning

In traditional Hindu families like ours, men provided and women were provided for. My father was a patriarch and I a pliant daughter.

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In traditional Hindu families like ours, men provided and women were provided for. My father was a patriarch and I a pliant daughter.

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Popular Authors

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