Reflection of Jasmine

When it was time to choose which book to read during the winter break, I chose Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee because after reading memoirs and novels in class this term, I was really into that genre. I am glad that I picked up this work because it was not really like many of the other works we read during the school year. However, I really wished we could have read it as a class because there are so many questions. It would have been nice to have them answered along the readings and also see how my classmates felt about what was going on in the book.

At first I thought I was not going to like the book very much after reading the first sentence, "Lifetimes ago, under a banyan tree in the village of Hasnapur, an astrologer cupped his ears- his satellite dish to the stars- and foretold my widowhood and exile"(3). Surprisingly, what struck me most about the work was the whole storyline itself. When I finished the book and read the back cover, it did not do any justice to what is actually in the plot. On the back cover, the publisher commented "In just a few years, Jasmine becomes Jane Ripplemeyer, happily pregnant by a middle-aged Iowa banker and the adoptive mother of a Vietnamese refugee." Reading this sentence, one would not expect the extreme of events that actually occurred and affected Jasmine, like getting raped and killing the rapist. This specific part of the novel also shows why I enjoyed this work so much.

This book was very detailed and vivid and I love books where I can mentally connect with the characters and how they must be feeling and what they are thinking during a specific moment. "I tried to speak, but my tongue burned and refused to bend" (119) When I read this section of the book, I felt so uncomfortable and a little repelled, as if I was in Jasmine's shoes and it was my tongue that was cut and I was the one who was not able to speak. A shiver definitely ran down my spine.

This book should