Bharati Mukherjee, who died at the age of 76 in January, 2017, was a novelist who wrote primarily about the immigrant experience in America. Born in Calcutta in 1940, she attended university in India, and then came to Iowa Writers Workshop in the United States. It was there she met her husband Clark Blaise, and set herself on the path toward American citizenship. Her first novel, The Tiger’s Daughter, was published in 1972. She would write several novels afterward, focusing most often on the life of the immigrant: As she said in 2003, “the narrative of immigration is the epic narrative of this millennium.” Her work culminated in a loose trilogy about Indians in both America and India, Desirable Daughters in 2002, The Tree Bride in 2004, and Miss New India in 2011. Richard Wolinsky interviewed Bharati Mukherjee about Miss New India at KPFA in 2011. These are excerpts from that interview.
Weekly theater review: The Baltimore Waltz by Paula Vogel, directed by Jonathan Moscone, at the magic theatre in San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center.