Essay Example on Self-identity and culture is an integral part of Indian Women

Self identity and culture is an integral part of Indian women who refused to buckle themselves under the pressure and succeeded in changing their own lives and lives of those who are dependent on them In literature it was being portrayed by majority of writers among them Bharati Mukherjee became the live example of a free woman who through her novels portrayed the struggles of immigrant women for achieving their identity Mukherjee provides confidence for the readers to challenge boldly against the traditional framework of the society and to turn her way towards a new consciousness of her own worth and place in the society Bharati Mukherjee is a well known immigrant writers of America who started her writing career at the age of three She has achieved many prestigious awards Mukherjee was born in Calcutta on July 27 1940 in a wealthy Brahmin family In 1947 she moved to London along with her family After three years they returned to India Mukherjee continued her studies in India After pursuing her graduation Mukherjee s father selected a groom for her to marry 

However she met an Canadian writer Clark Blaise at the writers workshop and married him in 1963 without her parents concern She informed her parents of the marriage By choosing a husband herself she broke the Hindu tradition of arranged marriage Her parents did not accept her marriage She settled in Canada after marriage In 1978 Mukherjee worked as a full time professor at McGill University she was not happy in Canada She felt that racial discrimination was worse there than in United States and her family returned to America in 1980 Mukherjee delineated in her writing the cultural changes and alienation in immigrant experience She wrote eight novels four short stories three nonfiction and a memoir co written with her husband Some of her novels are The Tiger s Daughter 1971 Wife 1975 Jasmine 1989 The Holder of the World 1993 Leave it to Me 1997 Desirable Daughters 2002 The Tree Bride 2004 Miss New India 2011 Her Short story collections include Darkness 1985 The Middleman and Other Stories 1988 A father The Management of Grief Days and Nights in Calcutta 1977 is a memoir written with her husband Clark Blaise Her non fiction works are The Sorrow and the Terror the Haunting Legacy of the Air India Tragedy 1987 written with Clark Blaise Political Culture and Leadership in India 1991 and Religionalism in Indian Perspective 1992 In 1988 she won National Book Critics Circle Awards for The Middleman and Other Stories She also have won a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1986 

The issue of identity is one of the significant problems of mankind in every society Quest for the search of identity are important feature of women of patriarchal society who were caught between tradition and modernity Desirable Daughter is a tale of three beautiful sisters Padma Parvati and Tara Mukherjee uses autobiographical and fictional elements to demonstrate the complexity of identity inherent in diasporic writing It is a novel with complex The protagonist Tara Banerjee explains the expectations of caste and family of Hindu tradition which determines whom they should marry The novel begins with the child bride Tara Lata who is five years old and is about to marry a thirteen-year-old boy from neighboring village But he dies of snakebite in the wedding night According to their custom she is considered as a widow and is cursed by everyone in her society Her father saves her from this curse by making her marry a tree 

The wedding to the tree is necessary to preserve her status Tara Lata lives rest of her life serving others and is a role model of Hindu Virtue Tara Lata is the tree bride The tree daughters Padma Parvati and Tara grew up in Calcutta As Tara grows up her mother tells her the story of the tree bride Tara Lata lived in her father s house for seventy years and she did not go anywhere before her death Tara and her sister both fulfill and defy the expectations placed on them by Hindu society and their families Tara obeys her parents and follows through with her arranged marriage to Bish She lives as a dutiful wife and mother for ten years But she breaks with tradition and turns back on Hindu culture when she divorces Bish and sees other men After the divorce she becomes more westernized in her dress and behavior The tree Bride is the story of Tara Lata Aunt of Tara Banerjee Who is the tree bride in the story narrated by Tara s mother