In the following essay on Mukherjee's novel Jasmine, F. Timothy Ruppel suggests that Jasmine disrupts the traditional narrative process, thematizing narration and identity by illustrating, through the circumstances of Jasmine's character, how identity can be ascribed by outside infiuences that desire to define her character as known, or as conforming to, their own social, economic or hierarchicalized mythos.

We are the outcasts and deportees, strange pilgrims
visiting outlandish shrines, landing at the end of
tarmacs, ferried in old army trucks where we are
roughly handled and taken to roped-off corners of
waiting rooms where surly, barely wakened customs
guards await their bribes. We are dressed in shreds of
national costumes, out of season, the wilted plumage
of intercontinental vagabondage. We only ask one
thing: to be allowed to land; to pass through; to
continue. (Mukherjee)

Who are these "strange pilgrims"? Certainly, we see them infrequently on the...