Bharati Mukherjee | |
|---|---|
 Speaking at the US Ambassador's residence inIsrael, June 11, 2004 | |
| Born | Bharati Mukherjee (1940-07-27)July 27, 1940 |
| Died | January 28, 2017(2017-01-28) (aged 76) New York City, U.S. |
| Occupation |
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| Nationality | Indian American Canadian |
| Genre | Novels,short stories, essays, travel literature, journalism. |
| Subjects | Post-colonial Anglophone fiction, Asian American fiction, autobiographical narratives, memoirs,American culture, immigration history, reformation and nationhood in the '90s,multiculturalism vs.mongrelization, fiction writing, autobiography writing, and the form and theory of fiction. |
| Notable works | Jasmine |
| Spouse | Clark Blaise |
Bharati Mukherjee (July 27, 1940 – January 28, 2017) was an American and Canadian writer and professor emerita in the department of English at theUniversity of California, Berkeley. Born in India, she was the author of a number of novels and short story collections, as well as works of nonfiction that often focused on the experience of Indian immigrants to America.[1][2]
OfIndianHinduBengali Brahmin origin, Mukherjee was born in present-dayKolkata, West Bengal, India during British rule. She later travelled with her parents toEurope afterIndependence, only returning to Calcutta in the early 1950s. There she attended theLoreto School. She received her B.A. from theUniversity of Calcutta in 1959 as a student ofLoreto College, and subsequently earned her M.A. fromMaharaja Sayajirao University ofBaroda in 1961.[3] She next travelled to the United States to study at theUniversity of Iowa. She received her M.F.A. from theIowa Writers' Workshop in 1963 and her PhD in 1969 from the department of Comparative Literature.[4]
In 1966, Mukherjee and her family moved to Canada, where she became a naturalized citizen and worked atMcGill University.[2] After more than a decade living inMontreal andToronto in Canada, Mukherjee and her husband,Clark Blaise, returned to the United States. She wrote of the decision in "An Invisible Woman," published in a 1981 issue ofSaturday Night. Mukherjee and Blaise co-authoredDays and Nights in Calcutta (1977). They also wrote the 1987 book,The Sorrow and the Terror regarding theAir India Flight 182 tragedy.[5]
In addition to writing many works of fiction and non-fiction, Mukherjee taught atSkidmore College,Queens College, andCity University of New York before joining the faculty atUC Berkeley.
In 1988 Mukherjee won the National Book Critics Circle Award for her collectionThe Middleman and Other Stories.[6] That year, she also became a naturalized American citizen.[2] In a 1989 interview with Ameena Meer, Mukherjee stated that she considered herself anAmerican writer, and not anIndian expatriate writer.[7]
Mukherjee died due to complications ofrheumatoid arthritis andtakotsubo cardiomyopathy on January 28, 2017, inManhattan at the age of 76.[8] She was survived by her husband and son. Her other son, Bart, predeceased her in 2015.[9]
