What is America?

Living abroad has made me stand back and analyze my home country. Growing up I thought America was perfect and there was no place better to be, but after living outside the country, my eyes have opened and I am much more aware of the world around me. Don't get me wrong, I still love my home country, but as I have gotten older, I have grown more critical and analytical of America.

Jasmine has contributed to that as well. It is a story about an Indian woman's voyage to America, hoping to find success and live a better life. In the novel, the main character Jasmine mentions several different views and experiences of America. Jasmine describes her first sight of America as this; "the first thing I saw were the two cones of nuclear plant, and smoke spreading from them in complicated but seemingly purposeful patterns...Eden's waste: plastic bottles, floating oranges..."(Mukherjee, 107). It is really quite sad that this is her first look at America, and unfortunately, her first experience of America was much worse than her first sight of America. She describes her first night; "My first night in America was spent in a motel with plywood over its windows, its pool bottomed with garbage sacks, and grass growing in its parking lot"(Mukherjee, 109). This is the same place she was raped by a man taking advantage of her foreignness.

Throughout the novel, she continues making comments about what she is seeing of America. One such observation being, "I had been in America nearly a day and had yet to see and 'American' face"(Mukherjee, 129 ). Another observation: "I am astounded by all this, the American need to make intuition so tangible, to possess a vision so privately"(Mukherjee, 125). She then ran into a more positive view of America when she met Lillian Gordon, the sweet woman who let Jasmine in, no questions asked, and took care of her. Jasmine says, "she represented to me the best in the American experience and the American character"(Mukherjee, 137). Jasmine called Lillian Gordon "An American Kind of Saint"(Mukherjee, 137).

Besides being overwhelmed by the fast pace and ever changing aspect of America that Jasmine found, she was able to see a more positive side of America in New York. She said that she "became an American in an apartment on Claremont Avenue across the street from a Barnard College dormitory"(Mukherjee, 165).  She became a part of a family. Taylor became another good example of an American for Jasmine. She comments on Taylor, "I fell in love with what he represented to me, a professor who served biscuits to a servant, smiled at her, and admitted her to the broad democracy of his joking, even when she didn't understand it. It seemed entirely American"(Mukherjee, 167).

After reading this book and seeing how many sides of America Jasmine saw, it was a reminder to me that America is not perfect and there are many dark sides to it that I don't know about. But the hope in the book and the happy ending she was able to have in American is still a good reminder of what freedom can bring.