Word: indians
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...authors of the book also seem to be a bit too trusting--if someone says they never made the statement, then obviously they did not make it. Philip Sheridan, for instance, is often credited with having said, "The only good Indian is a dead Indian." The quote stems from an account of the meeting between Sheridan and Commanche leader Toch-a-way. Sheridan denied having made the statement, but who would not--after the fact...
Bharati Mukherjee has caught that something, and she portrays an America that actually exists, that exists now. Jasmine is the story of an Indian girl who emigrates to America, shedding selves as she moves to, and through, this country, eventually realizing herself as genuinely American. It's a book about disintegration and change, constant rebirth in the midst of bewildering opportunity: she is Jyoti, then Jasmine and later, in Iowa, Jane Ripplemeyer, though even this is not an endpoint...
...flying the world that do not appear in any directory... we are refugees and mercenaries and guest workers; you watch us sleeping in airport lounges; you watch us unwrapping the last of our native foods..." Mukherjee gives us a strong sense of this under-world, and also of the Indian culture Jyoti is escaping...
This alien world we enter is shown as both merging into the American experience, and as illuminating its more familiar elements. In an Indian neighborhood of New York City, insulated with Hindi video stores and Punjabi fabric shops, Jasmine stifles in an atmosphere of Old World nostalgia. In Iowa, lonely Grandmother Ripplemeyer appreciates Jasmine's Indian sense of strong family ties...
...Sarney is caught between conflicting, and sometimes violent, forces within his nation. On one side are the settlers and developers, often backed by corrupt politicians, who are razing the forests to lay claim to the land. On the other are hundreds of fledgling conservation groups, along with the Indian tribes and rubber tappers whose way of life will be destroyed if the forests disappear. The clash has already produced the world's most celebrated environmental martyr, Chico Mendes, a leader of the rubber tappers who was murdered for trying to stand in the way of ranchers...