Animals in the Writing of Bharati Mukherjee

James Kim argues that "despite long noting the links between animalisation and racialisation, critical animal studies have yet to consider their relationship Asian American studies" (136). Relating this wider scholarly gap, of South writer Bharati Mukherjee (1940–2017) examine importance fauna within her œuvre. Tracing specific metaphors—from avian marine mammalian reptilian canine—this essay confronts silence via close textual analysis use as a theoretical lens. It compares Mukherjee's recurrent, often intertextual interreferential such tropes interrogates cultural gendered associations animals evoked by fiction essays. Writing Indian imagery into literature, neglected creaturely motifs signify power dreams, fall Mughal Empire in India, human communities endangered species, predator versus prey dynamics Darwinian logic survival. A shorthand for both India United States, metaphors expose brutal world danger, inequality, corruption.