Bharati Mukherjee, an Indian immigrant married to a Canadian, explained how she captures the chaos of the melting pot in her short stories and novels about South Asia, particularly the Indian, immigrant experiences in America to a full house of students in Conference Room A last Wednesday.

A professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, she is the author of more than a dozen books, novels and several short stories, many of which are drawn from her own experiences as an immigrant. Mukherjee depicts the clash of cultures and the dilemmas and successes with a unique understanding.

A cross-cultural writer, Mukherjee has won several grants and awards from the Canadian government, several universities, and the Guggenheim Foundation.

A painful part of immigration is encountering racism in the adopted country, according to Mukherjee. In her short story collection, ‘Darkness,’ published in 1985, Mukherjee explores Canadian prejudice against South Asians.

The racial intolerance she experienced in Canada compelled her to move back to the United States where she now settles and claims to have found greater acceptance as a South Asian.

“When I was in Canada, there was no written constitution that guaranteed me my rights. I was one of the first Canadians of Asian origin to stand up for my rights,” she says.

In an interview with Sybil Steinberg of Publishers Weekly, she described her feelings about America.

“Mine is clear-eyed but definite love of America. I’m aware of the brutalities, the violence here, but in the long run my characters are survivors … I feel American in a very fundamental way, whether Americans see me that way or not.”