Mohan Identity Analysis

Similarly Mohan has come to America for better prospects but does not get the job as he expects. He is reduced to the state of desperation since he can’t go back to his motherland loosing face, so he turns to be a street vendor and his wife’s culinary skills come to his rescue. He begins selling Indian food on a moving cart near government offices, till he is attacked by the racist mob which does not tolerate his progress. As he is being beaten, Mohan experiences such excruciating pain that Divakaruni describes it “like hammers breaking” (181). The Americans attitude reveals their contempt for Mohan in the following emotional outburst. “Sonofa-bitch Indian should have stayed in your own goddamn country” (180). Injured and broken, he has to go back to his native place.
Mohan is not the only character that experiences shattering on a physical level.

The search for identity is a major element we find in the delineation of her female characters. She deals with the lives of women both at home and abroad. Even when they are away from their native place, they are suffering because of the culture alienation. For them a foreign land has not changed their status much. Some people fight against this drawback and carve their identity and escape the drudgery. The characters Tilo, Ahuja’s wife, Geeta and Hamida, etc are a few examples. Gender plays a crucial role in the way in which immigrants experience diaspora, “…at each step of the migration process, women and men encounter different experiences” (Espín, 241). The characters in the novel are very clearly torn apart, often into multiple pieces both physically and emotionally. It shows how complex is the problem of identity crisis that Indians try to cope with in a foreign land. Throughout the novel Tilo is joined by a host of other people that share many aspects of life as immigrants, but each also has their own individual story both physically and