I have found my way to the United States after many transit stops. The unglimpsed phantom Faridpur and the all too real Manhattan have merged as “desh.” I am an American. I am an American writer, in the American mainstream, trying to extend it. This is a vitally important statement for me – I am not an Indian writer, not an expatriate. I am an immigrant; my investment is in the American reality, not the Indian. It took me ten painful years, from the early seventies to the early eighties, to overthrow the smothering tyranny of nostalgia. In the above excerpt, Mukherjee’s imagery of “overthrow the smothering tyranny of nostalgia” means what? The United States enabled her to escape the political and artistic oppression she suffered before emigrating.

Sentimental attachment to her country of birth stifled her ability to express herself as an American writer.

Immigrants have to learn to forget their past in order to be successful in America.

She regrets losing her cultural identity as an Indian.