What, according to Mukherjee in "A Four-Hundred-Year-Old Woman," is her "duty" as a writer? answer is A i belive aka to educate the American public about Third World countries.

She strives to give an inner life to those normally overlooked-"call them Indians, Filipinos, Koreans, Chinese"-"[her] duty is to give voice to continents, but also to redefine the nature of American and what makes an American."