Leave It to Me - Bharati Mukherjee [79]
Q: Does Leave It to Me mark a departure from your earlier novels?
BM: Actually, I think of my last three novels, Jasmine, The Holder of the World, and Leave It to Me, as a trilogy. The protagonist of each novel—Jyoti/Jasmine, Hannah/Salem Bibi, and Debby/Devi—is a strong woman who longs for a world that’s more just and more generous than the one she inherited at birth. These women are also bold enough, or maybe foolhardy enough, to act out their dreams. They are idealists and romantics; and because of this, they are also restless. But each woman responds in her unique way to dreams for a better life. Jasmine is innocent, curious; she embraces her new experiences in the New World even though she is often bewildered by them. Hannah is an illegitimate daughter in seventeenth-century Puritan Massachusetts. She has to escape her Puritan surrounding in order to return to it with a deeper understanding of its potential as well as its limits. Debby is a multiracial orphan, born and abandoned in India, then adopted by an American family in upstate New York. She is confused, hurt, angry. She has to sort through her various racial, cultural, social heritages before she can be at peace with herself. I think of Debby as the difficult sister of Jasmine. These three characters are very real to me. They are still carrying on their lives inside my head.
Q: What changes do you anticipate in your writing or in the projects you undertake?
BM: I never anticipate. The changes emerge, in spite of myself. At any given time, my head is crowded with characters who shout out their stories. Right now I’m working on two projects: a book of stories that I am tentatively titling Happiness, and a novel about three sisters, much like us three Mukherjee sisters, and the very different choices they make in adult life.
Reading Group Questions and Topics for Discussion
What attitude does Leave It to Me take toward adoption? How do you feel when Faustine/Debby/Devi abandons the DiMartinos so early in the novel?
When Debby starts her search for her “other life, [her] real life,” Serena DiMartino tells her daughter that her biological father had a police record. Debby recognizes that a police record will help her find her bio-parents:
“That’s a break for me, Mama. If they had a police record, that’s something to go on.”
“Being a criminal is a break? What kind of talk is that?”
“Just kidding, Mama. You brought me up to be decent.”
The dialogue suggests that Debby’s search for her bio-parents might prove to be “indecent.” Does it? How does Debby feel about abandoning stable Schenectady society to embrace the Haight’s counterculture? How do you feel about it?
In the first conversation between Ham and Devi, Ham remarks, “You have to come up with just the right name.… Names count.” In what ways do names count in Leave It to Me? Why are names constantly being changed? mispronounced? misunderstood? Originally named Faustine “after a typhoon,” Debby renames herself after a Hindu goddess, Devi. Why? What impact does changing her name have on her identity?
Despite this interest in her own name, Devi seems to seek out employment in which her name and identity simply don’t matter. First, she works as a telemarketer for Frankie Fong where she “tried out thirty personas” nightly. Later, she works for Jess DuPree’s Leave It to Me knowing that “A ME doesn’t have personal problems. A ME doesn’t have a life.” Why does Devi want these kinds of jobs? Does this work bring her closer to or drive her farther away from discovering her real identity, her real “me”?
Why is the novel titled Leave It to Me? What is left up to Devi to accomplish? Does she accomplish what she needs to?
When Devi reveals to Frankie Fong how little she knows about herself, she makes a statement intended for Frankie, but heard only by the reader: “I want you to know that we’ve both invented ourselves.” What does Devi mean? Later in their relationship,