S%#T HAPPENS!

I can’t relate to the idea of “hyphenation” as Robert terms the idea of cross-culturalism that results from living in one state when your roots are still embedded in another. What made me interested on this subject was a book I read a few months ago called No-No Boy, by John Okada, a story about a young Japanese-American man named Ichiro who returns home to his traditional Japanese parents from spending time in prison  for refusing to fight in WWII because he didn’t want to dishonor his parents. Upon return however, he no longer relates to his Japanese heritage because his family is blind and refuses to make the most of America, while he is ridiculed by Americans and other Japanese-Americans who fought in the war for his inactivity. He finds himself no longer Japanese and is not at all welcomed to be an American let alone willing to buy into the expectations put upon him to pursue the American dream. Even in the hands of good people who show him hope for his loss in confusion, Ichiro is too focused on the loss of his own soul as if he could never be happy or complete.

Bharati Mukherjee’s novel, Jasmine, addresses the subject of hyphenation in a different manner. Coming from India to the United States, Jane, given the American name by her husband in Iowa, assimilates into the American culture while holding true to her roots. While looking at her husband, Bud, relaxing in his bathrobe she remembers the high class implications such a scene would invite. “Bathrobes… were shorthand for glamour that we Hasnapuris were meant not to have” (231). She may view such a commodity differently than her husband might but she doesn’t reject them either; there is a balance between her two cultures. Unlike Ichiro she is able to perceive the new culture through the lenses of her old culture and maybe appreciate its potential because of it. But she chooses not to share this insight with Bud or his mother, whom Jane becomes good friends with. Such things “are a sign of disloyalty” (231) because neither Bud nor his mother could understand these thoughts.

People she comes in contact with in America don’t understand so she doesn’t force anything upon them. Unfortunately they aren’t as merciful. Bud and Taylor, her man from New York, both name her American names, forcing this assimilation on her for their own convenience and she takes these names as her own, assimilating for her own purposes. “Bud has changed my life. I am grateful” (231). While gratitude isn’t happiness, she admits that Bud’s American influence has added a shade of beauty to her identity that doesn’t hide, but accents her Indian culture. She’s making a life in Iowa instead of holding onto life somewhere else, as Ichiro’s parents did. In doing so she remains present into the moment to notice small wonders such as Bud’s bathrobe and their adopted son’s fascination for recreating electronics.

Speaking of which, their adopted son, Du, has a hobby of disassembling electronics and reassembling them in a new fashion. This action is a terrific metaphor of Jane’s reassembling her Indian-American-ness. After the reconstruction, the hyphenation is obsolete and she no longer either or, and not even some of this or some of that: instead, Jane has become something new entirely. This is why when Du leaves them she feels left alone. See, Du is Vietnamese and struggling with his own hyphenation in America. Of course, we don’t see this battle until he leaves to be with his sister who kept him alive while they were in the camps in Vietnam.  It’s then that we see that his focus has been on his past life, his past culture. Jane feels left alone, as if he gave up the life they were supposed to endure together, dealing with two separate cultures on their shoulders, until… Jane leaves… with Taylor. She turns her back on the identity of Jane and becomes Jasmine, as Taylor knows her, and goes to California. “Adventure, risk, transformation: the frontier is pushing” (240). Her transformations are now adventurous and the prospect of dehyphenization is no longer holding her tight to Bud; Jane is free and Jasmine can now assimilate and reconstruct herself in any way she wishes.

Poor Ichiro could never imagine such a freedom but the difference between him and Jasmine is what shows us the concept of true life: uncertainty, uncontrollable and un-foretelling. While they both deal with the same concept, the circumstances are immensely different, which complicates the comparison. If I had to slap a bumper-sticker on this one it’d have to be “Shit happens and then you die” or maybe “Life is what you make of it.”