Top Bharati Mukherjee Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Bharati Mukherjee Biography

Bharati Mukherjee

Bharati Mukherjee (July 27, 1940 – January 28, 2017) was an American writer and professor emerita in the department of English at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of a number of novels and short story collections, as well as works of nonfiction.

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Bharati Mukherjee Quotes

There was no audience for my books. The Indians didn't regard me as an Indian and North Americans couldn't conceive of me of a North American writer, not being white and brought up on wheat germ. My fiction got lost.

Americans, Audience, Book, Fiction, White

Mother Teresas detractors have accused her of overemphasizing Calcuttans destitution and of coercing conversion from the defenseless. 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.

Mother, Taken, Winning, Calcuttans, Causes, Detractors

Bengalis love to celebrate their language, their culture, their politics, their fierce attachment to a city that has been famously dying for more than a century. They resent with equal ferocity the reflex stereotyping that labels any civic dysfunction anywhere in the world 'another Calcutta. '

Attachment, Celebrate, Cities, Civic, Dysfunction, Politics

We do things when it is our time to do them. They do not occur to us until it is time; they cannot be resisted, once their time has come. It's a question of time, not motive.

Come, Motive, Occur, Our Time, Things

I have to put down roots where I decide to stay. It wasn't enough for me to be an expatriate Indian in Canada. If I can't feel that I can make social, political and emotional commitments to a place, I have to find another place.

Commitment, Commitments, Emotional, Expatriate, Roots

[On her writing agenda:] Make the familiar exotic; the exotic familiar.

Agendas, Exotic, Familiar, Writing

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. She would have in tow one or two slower-footed, sari-clad young Indian nuns. We thought her a freak. Probably wed picked up on unvoiced opinions of our Loreto nuns.

Childhood, Mother, Teresa, Two, Unvoiced, Woman

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

Calcutta, Cities, Country, Found, Hope, Iowa

My first novel, 'The Tiger's Daughter,' embodies the loneliness I felt but could not acknowledge, even to myself, as I negotiated the no man's land between the country of my past and the continent of my present.

Continent, Country, Daughter, Land, Mother, Negotiated

Through my fiction, I make mainstream readers see the new Americans as complex human beings, not as just The Other.

Beings, Complex, Fiction, Mainstream, Make, Reader

I am an American, not an Asian-American. My rejection of hyphenation has been called race treachery, but it is really a demand that America deliver the promises of its dream to all its citizens equally.

America, Deliver, Demand, Dream, Race

Dullness is a kind of luxury.

Dullness, Kind, Luxury

I had never walked on the street alone when I was growing up in Calcutta, up to age 20. I had never handled money. 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.

Couple, Growing Up, Notebook, Pencils, Street, Took

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: Spend two years studying creative writing at the Iowa Writers Workshop, then come back home and marry the bridegroom he selected for me from our caste and class.

Caste, Father, Home, Left, Night, Writing

In India, there are real consequences to inattention; drivers who jeopardize pedestrians can be lynched on the spot.

Inattention, India, Jeopardize, Real

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.

Complicated, Definition, Definitions, Littles, Madness, Overload

I had a 2-week courtship with a fellow student in the fiction workshop in Iowa and a 5-minute wedding in a lawyer's office above the coffee shop where we'd been having lunch that day. And so I sent a cable to my father saying, 'By the time you get this, Daddy, I'll already be Mrs. Blaise!'

Coffee, Father, Fellow, Having, Lunch

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.

Convent, Growing Up, Irish, Rules, Running, School

I am a naturalized U. S. citizen, which means that, unlike native-born citizens, I had to prove to the U. S. government that I merited citizenship.

Mean, Government, Citizens, Naturalized, Citizenship

I feel empowered to be a different kind of writer. The longer I stay here, the more light filters into my work. I feel very American. I belong.

American, Different, Filters, Kind, Light, Stay

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