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  • Birthday: Jun 1, 1987
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Realignment of self

April 20, 2008 / by JamesBrown

The definition of America is different to every individual. For some, it may just be a free land full of promise and hope, but to others it might be an escape from a predestined lifestyle given to you from your culture in another country. Those individuals born in this country will have a vastly different perspective compared to someone who has lived in another country and has immigrated here. In Jasmine, by Bharati Mukherjee, Jasmine (Jane) embarks on a journey of the soul to pursue a new life contrary to that of her ancestors. On this journey she parallels the prophecies of the astrologer that predicted her fate, but she does not let these prophecies control her. Instead, she makes a new life, adopts a son, and interacts with numerous people, affecting them along the way.


Jasmine and her adopted Vietnamese son Du embrace their American identities in different ways. According to Jasmine, “My transformation has been genetic, Du’s was hyphenated.” Du had become a hybrid, just like the recombinant electrical machines he would constantly build. Du would not spend his time integrating into American culture, instead, he would be more focused on things like “ altering the gene pool of the common American appliance.” Du’s high school paper even referred to him as “Du (Yogi) Ripplemeyer, a Vietnamese American.” How others perceive you is constructed with how you identify yourself. If you have a hyphenated name, the world is going to treat you as a hyphenated person. They might do this outspokenly but most of it will be silent thought. By eliminating the hyphen in his name, Du would have a far superior chance in following Jasmine’s example in becoming fully assimilated in American culture. Jasmine states that Vietnamese- Americans do not question either half to hard, implying that they have a tendency to float somewhere in the middle.


Jasmine fell to the same virus that also struck Darrel. This is the virus “that causes the banker to step out of marriage in order to live with an Indian, it is the same virus that causes an Iowan to dream of New Mexico.” The virus she is talking about is the virus of an inner sense of malaise that causes one to pursue something more than the life they have been given. Karin says, “Farm boys grow up guilty if they desert the family ground…we are born with guilt or quickly learn it.” Jasmine had escaped a whole life in India in order for a chance to become American. She escaped a lifetime where she would have probably been more oppressed for being a woman, a lifetime where she would be confined to the walls of her home, a lifetime where her parents would more than likely choose her marriage for her. She escaped this in order to become a non-hyphenated American and the accumulation of all her progress is evident in the last two pages of the book. When deciding whether or nor to leave her “would be husband” Bud, or to venture in to a life full of unknowns and mysteries with Taylor, Jane states that she is caught between the promise of America and old-world dutifulness. Her decision to leave her stable life and follow Taylor to California is the proof that she has succeeded in the transformation of her as a person.

“Watch me reposition the stars, I Whisper to the astrologer who floats cross-legged above my kitchen stove.” Jasmine says this as a way of proving to the astrologer that she has indeed succeeded on her journey. She is realigning the stars that the astrologer saw for her. She is proving to her old country of India, to America, and most importantly, herself, that it is not in the stars where we discover our path, it is in our hearts.

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