Belonging in America: Mukherjee and Alexie's Minority Narratives

Introduction: Two Minority Voices, One Question

What does it mean to be American? This question sits at the heart of works by Bharati Mukherjee and Sherman Alexie, two writers who approach American identity from profoundly different vantage points. Mukherjee, a Calcutta native who immigrated to the United States at the age of 21, writes autobiographically about the immigrant experience. Alexie, a Native American author, explores belonging through characters whose roots in this land predate the nation itself. Alexie's story "This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona" was later adapted into the film Smoke Signals. These narratives — Mukherjee's autobiographical and Alexie's carrying autobiographical elements — ask urgent questions about belonging, particularly in relation to a larger society that feels, in different ways, alien to each of them.

Mukherjee and Her Sister: Competing Visions of Home

The stories are similar in the ways their narrators and characters seek to find home. Mukherjee and her sister Mira are juxtaposed against each other in their quest to define that home. Both women have lived in the United States for decades, yet they hold starkly different views about the relationship they wish to have with the country. Alexie's characters, especially in Indian Education, also struggle to define their relationship with the United States as a whole.

To belong in America is a complicated question, and placing these two very different minority narratives alongside each other illuminates that complexity. Mukherjee's experience is one of active effort to fit in, and this is set against her sister Mira's experience of fitting in on a socio-cultural level — more or less — without having pursued the legal paperwork of citizenship to confirm it. This tension is difficult for both of them. Mira wanted to retain her Indian identity, and this desire ultimately caused her tremendous grief after American immigration rules changed.

By contrast, Bharati Mukherjee sought specifically to integrate as an American and was less interested in maintaining any sense of purity about her Indian roots. Indeed, she has strongly advocated for and expressed pride in what she calls "mongrelisation." Mira, in this respect, was arguably only ever an economic migrant to America — engaged with her work and community, but fundamentally different from her sister in her relationship to American identity.

Alexie's Characters and the Reservation Bubble

Alexie's characters seem to have America as a cultural force that swirls around them rather than through them. His characters live in a kind of bubble on the reservation, and whenever they leave it they encounter a fairly unique experience, almost like travelers in a foreign country. In Indian Education, Victor enjoys certain successes attending a white school, but there is always the underpinning awareness that he is different — and that this difference will shape his path. The characters in "Phoenix, Arizona" have a brief discussion about the meaning of the Fourth of July and what relevance it should hold for two Native Americans. The exchange highlights genuinely mixed feelings: not the same mixed feelings that the Mukherjee sisters experience, but mixed nonetheless.

Alexie's characters are not particularly interested in adopting an American cultural identity. Even when, as in Indian Education, doing so might ease their way, they accept the sacrifice involved in maintaining their self-identity. In this, Mira Mukherjee and Alexie's characters share something: neither group is willing to surrender who they are in exchange for fuller membership in the national community. The difference is that Mira arrived seeking economic opportunity, while Alexie's characters were native to the land long before the nation existed around them.

Conclusion: Americans at the Margins

These works are striking in the ways they frame belonging to America. Each set of characters is, in its own way, cut off from full membership in the national idea — yet all of them are Americans. Mukherjee's narratives show the effort and loss involved in choosing assimilation, as well as the precarity of remaining culturally present without legal standing. Alexie's narratives show a people for whom America is simultaneously home and foreign territory. Together, these minority voices complicate any simple answer to the question of what it means to be American, and remind us that the national identity has always been contested, layered, and unfinished.