SOURCE: Bowen, Deborah. “Spaces of Translation: Bharati Mukherjee's ‘The Management of Grief.’” ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature 28, no. 3 (July 1997): 48-60.

In the following essay, Bowen evaluates how the protagonist of Bharati Mukherjee's short story “The Management of Grief” functions as a bridge between Indian and Canadian society by employing a new language of hybridity that takes into account universal human emotions.

The word “translation” comes, etymologically, from the Latin for “bearing across.” Having been borne across the world, we are translated men. It is normally supposed that something always gets lost in translation; I cling, obstinately, to the notion that something can also be gained.

Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands

In the final article of the special January 1995 issue of PMLA on “Colonialism and the Postcolonial Condition,” Satya Mohanty observes that “vital cross-cultural interchange depends on the belief that we share a ‘world’ (no matter how partially...