The twelve essays that form this book, first published in 1993, interpret Bharati Mukherjee's oeuvre from a variety of critical perspectives. The authors' approaches range from the biographical to the poststructuralist, from cultural analysis to comparative commentary to deconstructive reading.

1. Introduction Emmanuel S. Nelson 2. The Inner World of Bharati Mukherjee: From Expatriate to Immigrant Maya Manju Sharma 3. Bharati Mukherjee as Autobiographer Pramila Venkateswaran 4. A Question of Identity: Where Gender, Race and America Meet in Bharati Mukherjee Brinda Bose 5. Creating, Preserving, Destroying: Violence in Bharati Mukherjee's Jasmine Samir Dayal 6. Sociopolitical Critique as Indices and Narrative Codes in Bharati Mukherjee's Wife and Jasmine Janet M. Powers 7. Telling Her Tale: Narrative Voice and Gender Roles in Bharati Mukherjee's Jasmine Pushpa N. Parekh 8. The Aesthetics of an (Un)willing Immigrant: Bharati Mukherjee's Days and Nights in Calcutta and Jasmine Anindyo Roy 9. Toward an Investigation of the Subaltern in Bharati Mukherjee's The Middleman and Other Stories and Jasmine Alpana Sharma Knippling 10. 'In the Presence of History': The Representation of Past and Present Indias in Bharati Mukherjee's Fiction Debjani Banerjee 11. Born Again American: The Immigrant Consciousness in Jasmine Gurleen Grewal 12. Love and Indian Immigrant in Bharati Mukherjee's Short Fiction Mitali R. Pati 13. The Short Fictions of Bernard Malamud and Bharati Mukherjee Carole Stone