Name this short story!

September 9, 2009 4:30 PM

Name this short story about an immigrant student working as a babysitter for an American professor.

I hope you folks can identify this short story from my hazy recollections of a Postcolonial Feminism course.

It begins when a young women immigrates to the US from a Caribbean nation. She goes to a University (maybe Michigan) and starts working as a maid/babysitter for a professor. The story ends when the professor makes a sexual advance on her and she seems to welcome it.

Like I said, these recollections are hazy and I'm not sure which ones are actually correct.

Thanks!

posted by Bizurke to Writing & Language (3 answers total)

Best answer: Are you sure it was a short story? Could it have possibly been this novel instead? Jasmine is Indian and not from the Caribbean, but there was a subplot about her getting involved with a Professor at Columbia.
posted by Diagonalize at 7:52 PM on September 9, 2009

Response by poster: Thanks for the tip, Diagonalize! I looked up the novel Jasmine, and it turns out I was thinking of the short story of the same name Mukherjee revised/expanded into the novel.
posted by Bizurke at 11:55 PM on September 9, 2009

Glad I could help!

Fun fact: I read Jasmine as part of a class taught by Professor Mukherjee, where she would occasionally make charmingly bizarre statements, like asserting she was the Rosa Parks of Canada.
posted by Diagonalize at 7:29 AM on September 10, 2009