Darkness Mass Market Paperback – March 22, 1992

.The introduction to this collection has an optimism and charm missing from the stories themselves. The short stories in "Darkness" are grim, full of strange sex, and so profoundly disturbing that I felt polluted reading it.The stories, promoted as stories of the immigrant experience, have very little to do with culture shock, acculturation, or any other aspect of the immigrant experience. They are instead a very wierd feminist collection which may or may not reflect some of Mukherjee's personal demons.The first half of the book contains the most troubling stories. Among the nightmare tales in this book:An unfaithful wife from Lucknow stubbornly refuses to leave her American lover's bed when his wife comes home; an unlovable Indian daughter has self-inseminated herself and is beaten by her horrified father; a Bangladeshi child whose nipples were cut off by soldiers with bayonets has grown into a well-acclimated adult. She is courted by an older Indian physician who pressures her to give up her dreams of higher education.The second half of the collection is only somewhat lighter, fresher and more optimistic. I am fascinated that the last sentence in the final story is a sales description of a painting entitled "Emperor on Horseback Leaves Walled City." I felt that I, too, was leaving a walled city when I finished this book.I have read most of Mukherjhee's other books and like them, but I found this particular collection of her stories disturbing and not worth reading.Not recommended.Kim BurdickStanton, DE

All writers choose the stories they will tell out of the infinite number that can be told, and this is especially true in short stories, where the number of narratives that can come forth are limited. The best stories read naturally, and we forget that the author has chosen them, that they are deliberate. Mukherjee's stories in this collection fall short, for me, of this criterion.If Mukherjee were Nabokov, the introduction to this novel would be a trick, a game, something to deceive our reading of the stories to come. Unfortunately, this was not the case. Perhaps I am simply too young to understand the politics surrounding this book's publication, perhaps things have changed, but the rah-rah-USA-nation-of-immigrants vs. o-racist-Canada opposition really irked me throughout the book. (And I am from the US.) Frankly, this collection read to me like it was being written with a certain purpose for a certain group of people, whether intentionally or (much, much worse and less forgivable) unintentionally.I was most surprised that one reviewer wrote that he enjoyed and understood "Darkness" because, as an Asian man, he can understand such a thing. As someone who thought this book would mainly be enjoyed by enlightened white folk in search of clues to Indian-American cultural identity and pathos, I was certainly shocked especially that someone would proudly claim his affinity to a character I read as weak and emasculated by the strong women close to him, momentarily relieved that some man might have had temporary power over his daughter, terrified to the point of murder when he realized his mistake.In short (which I haven't been), I was disappointed in the stories, annoyed by some of the unnatural moments in Mukherjee's writing when it is clear she is too aware of her audience and not living deeply within her characters (What Indian person would say "Goa, India" for example, rather than just the obvious "Goa"), HOWEVER, given the other reviewer's easy identification with the characters-- I may be completely off in my charactertization of these stories.

Mukherjee writes with sharp wit, presenting her Indian immigrant characters in uncomfortable, absurd, and often terrible situations. Her stories are about people who surrender "little bits of a reluctant self every year, clutching the souveniers of an ever-retreating past" [from her "Introduction"]. Her immigrant characters want to fit in their new America, and yet they want to cling to their pasts, their cultures, their ethics. They want to be American, in the sense of being successful and fitting in, and yet they can't reconcile themselves to it; America, often, rejects them, eats away at their traditions, their values, and even their self-respect. Note, though, that Mukherjee does not moralize; she never loses her sense of irony or absurdity.

It's really a wonderful short stories. I like, especially, Father. I am a parent and a Asian, so I can understand his feelings. I don't think it is a murder.