SOURCE: “The American Dream: Immigration and Transformation in The Middleman and Other Stories,” in The Fiction of Bharati Mukherjee: A Critical Symposium, Prestige Books, 1996, pp. 137-47.

In the following essay, Tikoo examines several of the short stories of The Middleman and Other Stories, concluding that “Mukherjee's stories ultimately present a fascinating picture of what constitutes modern America and the modern experience.”

Bharati Mukherjee's The Middleman and Other Stories is a fascinating collection that depicts the problems of the people emigrating to America and the dream of new life which tempts them to go there. America holds out to them the promise of a bright future, a world free from inhibitions, racial differences based on multinational customs, religions, traditions, languages, etc. The collection of stories presents a rich vision of the free new world that is America through a variety of American characters but who essentially hail from the...