{"id":160,"date":"2014-06-09T19:46:05","date_gmt":"2014-06-09T19:46:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/postcolonialstudies\/?p=160"},"modified":"2019-01-08T17:13:46","modified_gmt":"2019-01-08T17:13:46","slug":"alexander-meena","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/postcolonialstudies\/2014\/06\/09\/alexander-meena\/","title":{"rendered":"Alexander, Meena"},"content":{"rendered":"

Biography<\/h3>\n
\"Image<\/a>
Image by Tamara Abul Hadi\/CC Licensed<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Mary Elizabeth Alexander was born in Allahabad, India, on February 17, 1951. She passed away on November 21, 2018 at the age of 67 (see obituary in the NY times<\/a>). Her final poem, “Prognosis,” can be read here<\/a>. Although christened Mary Elizabeth, she has been called \u201cMeena\u201d since birth, and, in her fifteenth year, she officially changed her name to Meena. Not so much an act of defiance as one of liberation, Alexander writes: \u201cI felt I had changed my name to what I already was, some truer self, stripped free of the colonial burden\u201d in her autobiography,\u00a0Fault Lines<\/em> (74). Representing her own multilingual nature, \u201cMeena\u201d means in \u201cfish\u201d in Sanskrit, \u201cjewelling\u201d in Urdu, and \u201cport\u201d in Arabic.\u00a0\u00a0Alexander and her family lived in Allahabad, yet returned every summer to Kerala<\/a> where her mother\u2019s parents resided.<\/p>\n

In 1956, the Sudan gained independence and asked other Third World countries for assistance in establishing its government. Alexander\u2019s father applied for a job with the Sudanese government and the family relocated to Khartoum. From age five to eighteen, Alexander traversed the waters between the Sudan and India, between Khartoum and Kerala, and between her immediate family and her grandparents. Once she was eighteen and had received her degree from Khartoum University, Alexander left her Sudanese home for Nottingham University in Britain. It was here that she earned her Ph.D., but her tie with India was not broken. She returned to Pune to live with her grandparents, and ended up working at Delhi University, Central Institute of Hyderabad, and Hyderabad University.<\/p>\n

It was in Hyderabad that Alexander met her husband, David Lelyveld. In 1979, the two moved to New York City,where they still live with their two children: Adam Kuravilla Lelyveld (b. 1980) and Svati Maraiam Lelyveld (b. 1986). Alexander is currently a professor at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and still takes trips back to Kerala annually.<\/p>\n

Literature<\/h3>\n

Meena Alexander\u2019s literary career began early, at the tender age of ten, when she began writing poetry. While her poetry might be her best-known work, her works span a variety of literary genres. Her first book, a single lengthy poem, entitled The Bird\u2019s Bright Wing<\/em>, was published in 1976 in Calcutta.<\/p>\n

Since then, Alexander has published eight volumes of poetry, including\u00a0River and Bridge<\/em>; two novels: Nampally Road<\/em> (1991) and Manhattan Music<\/em> (1997); two collections of both prose and poetry, The Shock of Arrival: Reflections on Postcolonial Experience <\/em>(1996)\u00a0and Poetics of Dislocation<\/em> (2009); a study on Romanticism:\u00a0Women in Romanticism: Mary Wollstonecraft, Dorothy Wordsworth and Mary Shelley<\/em> (1989); and her autobiography, Fault Lines<\/em> (1993\/2003). (See Postcolonial Novel<\/a>, List of writers and Filmmakers from the Indian Subcontinent<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Establishing Identity in Fault Lines<\/em><\/h4>\n

Fault Lines<\/em> is Alexander\u2019s autobiography. Not only an unraveling of her past, the book also highlights themes that occur in Alexander\u2019s poetry. As a result of her family\u2019s relocations as a youth, Alexander struggles in Fault Lines<\/em> to forge a sense of identity, despite a past full of moves and changes. Thus, this work revolves around the theme of establishing one\u2019s self, an identity independent of one\u2019s surroundings. In her autobiography she writes: \u201cI am, a woman cracked by multiple migrations. Uprooted so many times she can connect nothing with nothing\u201d (3). In fact, the title itself suggests a questioning of lines, boundaries, definitions of oneself.\u00a0As Alexander writes, \u201cI am a poet writing in America. But American poet?. . . An Asian-American poet then?. . . Poet tout court?. . . woman poet, a woman poet of color, a South Indian woman who makes up lines in English. . . A Third World woman poet. . .?\u201d (193). Alexander searches for her own identity and self-creation amidst a world that strives to define, identify, and label people. These definitions of race and nationality prove difficult to defy. (See Mimicry, Ambivalence, and Hybridity<\/a>)<\/p>\n

The tension surrounding self-identification emerges in a scene where Alexander\u2019s son, Adam, encounters a man who asks him: \u201cWhat are you?\u201d Adam, of mixed heritage, chooses to identify himself as neither American nor Indian, but, rather, a Jedi knight (172). Alexander asks: \u201cWhat did my first-born wish for himself? Some nothingness, some transitory zone where dreams roamed, a border country without passport or language?\u201d (172).\u00a0\u00a0Even choosing a cultural identification has its boundaries and borders by which to abide.<\/p>\n

Early in her youth, Alexander\u2019s mother tells her she must never take a job, that her work is to raise her children (14). Alexander\u2019s choices obviously took her in a direction different from that which her mother had taught her, choosing both a career and a family. Thus, the process of self-creation for Alexander has numerous facets: creating an identity despite a patchwork past; fighting against definitions demanded by greater society; and, also, fighting against traditions and definitions enforced within the community. (See Gender and Nation<\/a>)<\/p>\n

English and Colonialism in Fault Lines<\/em><\/h4>\n

Alexander emerged from a postcolonial country; thus, her work deals with personal as well as national concerns. One of these themes is the use of the English language<\/a>. Though she has written in French, Hindi and Malayalam, Alexander\u2019s work is predominantly in English. As with so many other postcolonial authors, Alexander struggles in Fault Lines<\/em>\u00a0 with the use of English itself:<\/p>\n