“Those Who Stay and Those Who Leave”: Diasporic Identity and the Making of Woman Warriors in Bharati Mukherjee’s Fiction

Abstract

Bharati Mukherjee’s novels Jasmine, The Tiger’s Daughter, and Desirable Daughters vividly examine the divide between “those who stay and those who leave,” a motif that underscores the struggles and resilience of her female protagonists. These women emerge as “warriors” who negotiate identity, belonging, and transformation within the fraught terrain of migration and cultural dislocation. In Jasmine, the protagonist undergoes multiple reinventions, embodying the immigrant woman’s capacity for survival and renewal in an alien land. The Tiger’s Daughter captures Tara’s disorientation upon returning to a homeland that feels estranged, highlighting the ambivalence of diasporic belonging. Meanwhile, Desirable Daughters presents three sisters—Padma, Parvati, and Tara—whose divergent paths dramatize the intersections of tradition, modernity, and global identity. Across these texts, Mukherjee portrays displacement not merely as rupture but as a catalyst for agency, resilience, and empowerment, framing immigrant women as active participants in their own narratives of survival and self-discovery.

DOI - https://doi.org/10.65525/SVUP.9788199392083.2025.41-55.