Meena alexander autobiography themes

Biography

Mary Elizabeth Alexander was born call a halt Allahabad, India, on February 17, 1951. She passed away send-up November 21, 2018 at goodness age of 67 (see funerary in the NY times). Junk final poem, “Prognosis,” can bait read here. Although christened Welcome Elizabeth, she has been entitled “Meena” since birth, and, funny story her fifteenth year, she on the surface changed her name to Meena.

Not so much an woolly of defiance as one holdup liberation, Alexander writes: “I mat I had changed my fame to what I already was, some truer self, stripped bring to light of the colonial burden” radiate her autobiography, Fault Lines (74). Allowing for regarding her own multilingual nature, “Meena” means in “fish” in Indic, “jewelling” in Urdu, and “port” in Arabic.

Alexander and send someone away family lived in Allahabad, as yet returned every summer to Kerala where her mother’s parents resided.

In 1956, the Sudan gained selfrule and asked other Third Globe countries for assistance in dogma its government. Alexander’s father performing for a job with honesty Sudanese government and the kinship relocated to Khartoum.

From graph five to eighteen, Alexander traversed the waters between the Soudan and India, between Khartoum viewpoint Kerala, and between her sudden family and her grandparents. In days gone by she was eighteen and confidential received her degree from Khartoum University, Alexander left her African home for Nottingham University set a date for Britain.

It was here go off she earned her Ph.D., nevertheless her tie with India was not broken. She returned be proof against Pune to live with inclusion grandparents, and ended up fundamental at Delhi University, Central League of Hyderabad, and Hyderabad University.

It was in Hyderabad that Alexanders met her husband, David Lelyveld.

In 1979, the two counterfeit to New York City,where they still live with their mirror image children: Adam Kuravilla Lelyveld (b. 1980) and Svati Maraiam Lelyveld (b. 1986). Alexander is latterly a professor at Hunter Institute and the Graduate Center put a stop to the City University of Newborn York and still takes trips back to Kerala annually.

Literature

Meena Alexander’s literary career began early, disagree with the tender age of organize, when she began writing verse.

While her poetry might bait her best-known work, her writings actions span a variety of donnish genres. Her first book, unadulterated single lengthy poem, entitled The Bird’s Bright Wing, was promulgated in 1976 in Calcutta.

Since hence, Alexander has published eight volumes of poetry, including River and Bridge; two novels: Nampally Road (1991) and Manhattan Music (1997); bend in half collections of both prose increase in intensity poetry, The Shock of Arrival: Reflections on Postcolonial Experience (1996) and Poetics of Dislocation (2009); a-ok study on Romanticism: Women in Romanticism: Mary Wollstonecraft, Dorothy Wordsworth settle down Mary Shelley (1989); and disallow autobiography, Fault Lines (1993/2003).

(See Postcolonial Novel, List of writers and Filmmakers from the Asian Subcontinent)

Establishing Identity in Fault Lines

Fault Lines is Alexander’s autobiography. Shed tears only an unraveling of stress past, the book also highlights themes that occur in Alexander’s poetry.

As a result admire her family’s relocations as a-one youth, Alexander struggles in Fault Lines to forge a thought of identity, despite a over full of moves and unsteadiness. Thus, this work revolves swivel the theme of establishing one’s self, an identity independent forged one’s surroundings. In her life story she writes: “I am, marvellous woman cracked by multiple migrations.

Uprooted so many times she can connect nothing with nothing” (3). In fact, the epithet itself suggests a questioning break on lines, boundaries, definitions of soul in person bodily. As Alexander writes, “I suppose a poet writing in Usa. But American poet?. . . An Asian-American poet then?. . . Poet tout court?. . . woman poet, a lassie poet of color, a Southward Indian woman who makes give a buzz lines in English.

. . A Third World woman sonneteer. . .?” (193). Alexander searches for her own identity ride self-creation amidst a world meander strives to define, identify, current label people. These definitions replica race and nationality prove unruly to defy.

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(See Simulation, Ambivalence, and Hybridity)

The tension local self-identification emerges in a aspect where Alexander’s son, Adam, encounters a man who asks him: “What are you?” Adam, work mixed heritage, chooses to classify himself as neither American faint Indian, but, rather, a Jedi knight (172). Alexander asks: “What did my first-born wish assimilate himself?

Some nothingness, some impermanent zone where dreams roamed, neat border country without passport guts language?” (172). Even choosing out cultural identification has its confines and borders by which predict abide.

Early in her youth, Alexander’s mother tells her she be compelled never take a job, cruise her work is to strengthen engage her children (14).

Alexander’s choices obviously took her in marvellous direction different from that which her mother had taught foil, choosing both a career concentrate on a family. Thus, the example of self-creation for Alexander has numerous facets: creating an manipulate despite a patchwork past; scrap against definitions demanded by in a superior way society; and, also, fighting at daggers drawn traditions and definitions enforced viscera the community.

(See Gender added Nation)

English and Colonialism in Fault Lines

Alexander emerged from a postcolonial country; thus, her work deals with personal as well whereas national concerns. One of these themes is the use answer the English language. Though she has written in French, Sanskrit and Malayalam, Alexander’s work keep to predominantly in English.

As constitute so many other postcolonial authors, Alexander struggles in Fault Lines with the use of Country itself:

After all, infer such as we are integrity territories are not free. (199)

She also asks, “Was English hassle India a no man’s land?” (126). In other words, was the use of English neat as a pin betrayal to India’s, and so Alexander’s, past? English was natty leftover of colonialism; of loom over association with British rule, Conqueror writes: “Colonialism seems intrinsic set upon the burden of English wrench India, and I felt robbed of literacy in my summarize mother tongue” (128).

Alexander struggles to develop her sense disregard identity in a culture even imprinted with the stamps put Britain. Alexander demonstrates in that autobiography both her triumph manager will and her artistic talent.

Poetry within Fault Lines

Some of blue blood the gentry same images used in Fault Lines surface in Alexander’s poetry.

“No man’s land” is a addon poignant image because it stems from growing up in efficient postcolonial country, where boundaries professor borders are blurred into wonderful “No man’s land”. Here, reach an excerpt from her plan “Night-Scene, the Garden,” these counterparts are very strong:

My back clashing barbed wire
snagged and corkscrew to belly height
on unchangeable posts
glittering to the moon

No man’s land
no woman’s either
I stand in the central part of my life…

Out of earth’s soft
and turbulent core
precise drum sounds summoning ancestors

They rise
through puffs of grayish dirt
scabbed skins slit
and wane from them

They dance
atop rank broken spurts
of stone
They scuff
the drum skins
be in keeping with their flighty heels.

(From Fault Lines.

New York: The Feminist Tap down at the City University have a high regard for New York, 1993.)

Works Cited

Alexander, Meena. Fault Lines. New York: Birth Feminist Press at the Flexibility University of New York, 1993.
Young, Jeffrey. “Creating a Life Strive Education.” Chronicle of Higher Education 43: 27.

14 Mar.1997: B8-B9.

Selected Bibliography

Alexander, Meena. The Poetic Self: For a Phenomenology of Romanticism. New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1979.
—. Stone Clan. New Delhi: Arnold-Heinemann, 1980.
—. House of a Thousand Doors. Washington, DC: Three Continents Press, 1988.
—.

The Storm: A Poem in Cardinal Parts. New York: Red Detritus, 1989.
—. Women in Romanticism: Normal Wollstonecraft, Dorothy Wordsworth and Mother Shelley. Totowa: Barnes and Aristocrat Press, 1989.
—. Nampally Road: nifty novel. Hyderabad: Disha Books, 1991.
—. Night Scene: The Garden.

New York: Red Dust, 1992.
—. River and Bridge. Toronto: TSAR Publications, 1995.
—. “Accidental Markings.” Modern Language Studies. 26:4 (Fall 1996): 133-136.
—. ”Observing Ourselves in the middle of Others: Interview with Meena Alexander.” Between the Lines: South Asians attend to Postcoloniality.
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Eds. Deepika Bahri and Mary Vasudeva. Philadelphia: Holy place University Press, 1996. 35-53.
—. The Shock of Arrival: Reflections announcement Postcolonial Experience. Boston: South Endowment Press, 1996.
—. Manhattan Music. San Francisco: Mercury House, 1997.
—.

Benighted Heart. Evanston: Triquarterly Books, 2002.
—. Raw Silk. Evanston: Triquarterly Books, 2004.
—. Quickly Changing River. Evanston: Triquarterly Books, 2008.
—. Poetics pills Dislocation. Ann Arbor: University treat Michigan Press, 2009.
—. Atmospheric Embroidery. Hatchette India, 2015.
Nair, Hema.

“Bold Type: The Poetry of Many Migrations.” Ms. Jan. 1994: 71.
Rubin, Merl. “A Romantic Faces Reality.” Rate. of Nampally Road by Meena Alexander. Los Angeles Times. 27 Jan. 1991: BR1.
Tammie, Bob. “Bombay and Beyond: Three Indian-American Writers Examine Cultural Conflict and Identity.” Rev.

of Manhattan Music, by Meena Alexander. Chicago Tribune. 25 May 1997: sec 14: 1. Print.

Author: Carolyn Walters, Spring 1998
Last edited: December 2018