American Dreamer by Bharati Mukherjee - Summary

Mukherjee calls America a myth. Mukherjee is a naturalized citizen and had to prove her worth to become one. She was born in Calcutta, India and never expected to naturalize, but to return home to marry the man her father picked for her. When she first arrived in Iowa for two years to study it was very homogeneous but now, 35 years later, it is so diverse that there's a cultural  or identity crisis regarding foreigners. In India this was unheard of, because classification matters above all and decrees precisely who each person is. Mukherjee herself was defined by her ancestry, caste and homeland.

One day she spontaneously married her Canadian husband. For ten years she felt like an expatriate, and wrote a book that was an expression of this. After 14 years in Canada she decided to become an immigrant instead of an expatriate and moved to America with her family. Canada was hard because it was very racially exclusivist. America on the other hand held the appeal of its egalitarian Constitution and Bill of Rights. She became American by choice. However, currently she finds racial hatred and hatred for immigrants, legal and illegal. It is important, she says, to agree about a national identity and to cease the divisive distinction of "us" vs. "them".

Ideals are problematic because each nation holds different ideals. There are incidents of what can be interpreted as racial injustices in the legal system still in America today, such as the caning of a Singapore teenager over spray painting cars or attempts to enact a policy that decrees teaching that American culture is superior.

America is unique in that its founding ideal is different from that of European nations. It embraces a utopian heterogeneity as opposed to homogeneity. Mukherjee proposes a new tradition that is neither "the enforced assimilation of the melting pot" nor "the Canadian model of a multicultural mosaic" which isolates different cultures and doesn't allow individuals to place the good of their nation above those of their ethnic group.

The ' "us" vs. them" ' mentality is dangerous. There is violence against minority groups and legal immigrants are mistakenly blamed for social and economic problems. Cultural memory/multiculturalism should be discouraged because of this. Instead America should see itself as a constantly changing "we". Several identities and changing identities are possible for individuals as well.

Mukherjee rejects hyphenation because it is indicative of the American paradigm in which white is centric and ethnicities are marginal and she doesn't want to be marginalized. This has caused some Indian Americans to condemn her but she chooses to focus on her present instead of her past. Some parents are upset that their children have forgotten traditions of the homeland but Mukherjee thinks it is desirable to let children acculturate and feel at home in their new land.

Those Indian Americans who react to marginalization by becoming hyper-Indian she counsels to acquaint themselves with the legal system and bring change about that way.

America changes immigrants and immigrants change America. Coming to a new place is not a loss but a gain.

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Notes

·       Why does she retain the hyphen for other ethnicities? Either leave them for all or remove them for all. Perhaps she feels she cannot speak for African Americans, but her usage that implies that Indian Americans are as a minority inherently different from African Americans (and other minorities)