Status
Genres
Publication
Description
When Jasmine is suddenly widowed at seventeen, she seems fated to a life of quiet isolation in the small Indian village where she was born. But the force of Jasmine's desires propels her explosively into a larger, more dangerous, and ultimately more life-giving world. In just a few years, Jasmine becomes Jane Ripplemeyer, happily pregnant by a middle-aged Iowa banker and the adoptive mother of a Vietnamese refugee. Jasmine's metamorphosis, with its shocking upheavals and its slow evolutionary steps, illuminates the making of an American mind; but even more powerfully, her story depicts the shifting contours of an America being transformed by her and others like her -- our new neighbors, friends, and lovers. In Jasmine, Bharati Mukherjee has created a heroine as exotic and unexpected as the many worlds in which she lives. "Rich...one of the most suggestive novels we have about what it is to become an American." -- The New York Times Book Review… (more)
Media reviews
User reviews
Born in that strife torn part of India, where the trauma of the Partition remains a wound today, Jyoti's (who is given the name of Jasmine by her husband) story starts "Lifetimes ago, under a banyan tree in the village of Hasnapur, an asrologer cupped his ears--his satellite dish to the stars--and foretold my widowhood and exile. " The language of this story swept me away. I could so easily visualize her sisters, "slow, happy girls with butter-smooth arms or hear the humor and love in Taylor's voice, talking to his young daughter, later on in New York.
The novel follows young Jyoti through a decade of her life, from 14 to 24. In each phase of her life, she is given a new name by different men who are pivotal in her world at that point: Jasmine, Jase, Jane, Mom. When the astrologer proved correct, and she is widowed at age 17 in an act of political violence, her exile, as an illegal immigrant to the United States is not far behind. Her entrance to that country is heralded by a horrifically brutal act, but she survives, able to compartmentalize her life as easily as she is to slip into another name. How she gets from a rural village in Punjab to Baden, Elsa County, Iowa is a journey of more than miles. The poetic language and soft humor woven in the telling are what kept me reading, uncertain until the very last page the next trajectory of this young woman's life.
The main character is a woman named Jasmine. Throughout the story she goes by several other names
She starts out as a young girl in India where she marries at fifteen. When her husband is murdered in a bombing, she travels to America with the intent of committing suicide at the college campus he was to go to. However, she is stopped by a fierce determination to live after a hardship befalls her.
Without giving away too much of the novel I don't want to give greater detail to the events of her life. She lives with several people performing different tasks at each and this storyline flits back and forth with one of her final stays, with a handicapped man whose child she is carrying.
I was impressed with this novel. While I originally wanted to dislike it for not being what I expected I found that it told an impressive story. One might not think much of the hardships of one woman, but this book made you care about her and at the end I was rooting for her to take a certain path in life.
The language is clear and doesn't get overly wordy. Even though a lot of the concepts are from India Mukherjee makes them easy to understand. Overall, it was a great story.
Jasmine
Published in 1989
241 pages
Adult situations (rape); parent permission required.
I had a love/ hate response to this book. I really liked it & then finally resented its narrative seduction (drive to conclusion). I wasn't satisfied with the ending. Taylor & Duff arrive. Jasmine is in love & leaves Bud (right after Du has also left for CA). She has told us that Bud was a great guy. Now, he's a cripple (politically incorrect word but useful here) & 30 years older than she is & would be a dead end for Jasmine. What about the baby she's carrying? There's not even a mention of the right or wrongness of taking that baby away with her (it's not yet born). I don't buy the Taylor fantasy. He does little for me. Bud is a better person. Which is not to say that Iowa & Bud make sense for Jasmine, but that she perhaps lets herself off the hook a bit too easily, just as she did when she first became involved with Bud (Karin, Bud's ex-wife asked her then why she never thought to ask Bud if he was married. Jasmine treats this question as irrelevant, since it was Bud who fell in love with her & not her who pursued him. But the question seems quite relevant to me. It's as if Jasmine's own story (poverty, lack of education, murdered husband, rape, murder) allows her (or the author) to rationalize some dubiously ethical decision-making.
What's more, it is exactly the sort of depressing story about hopeless lives that is the reason I don't read adult fiction. In this book, women are at best symbols, at worst transactions -- never people. I have no doubt that this is true for a lot of women in the world. But I have learned that it does me no good to read novels that make me want to give up on humanity. If I'm going to read a made-up story, it may as well inspire rather than depress me, right? Depressing things aren't by definition more true. I'm giving up on this one.
Quotes: "An astrologer cupped his ears, his satellite dish to the stars, and foretold my widowhood and exile."