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Book Salon
Jasmine

  • This month we're reading Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee. Our faculty host is Scotty McLennan.

    Listen to an interview with our Book Salon host.

    "This book provides a wonderful opportunity for men and women to explore different worldviews, moral commitments, and ways to pursue a meaningful life."

    Scotty McLennan, lecturer in political economy at the Graduate School of Business and former dean for religious life at Stanford

How to Participate

About this quarter's book selection

How does a 17-year-old widow from a small Indian village come to be the wife of a middle-aged  banker and mother of a Vietnamese refuge in Iowa? More than just an exotic tale of survival, Jasmine’s journey from Hasnapur to Florida, to Manhattan and finally to Iowa probes what it means to be a woman and an American in a post-colonial world. With murder, rape, illegal immigration and multiple name changes dotting her path, Jasmine manages to transform tragedy into renewal through sheer spunk and audacity. Bharati Mukherjee’s poetic prose draws just enough sympathy for Jasmine without losing her transformation’s sense of urgency to saccharine flourishes. All criticism toward its treatment of female and Oriental stereotypes considered, this riveting New York Times Book Review notable book of the year (1989) will nonetheless have you turning its pages with vigor to match that of Jasmine’s cross-cultural metamorphosis.

The Stanford Book Salon [Seriously Unstuffy]