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 egalitari...