Meena Alexander
Meena Alexander (b. 1951, christened Mary Elizabeth) was born in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh. When she was five, her family moved to Sudan. After her education there, she went to study in Britain in Nottingham University.
After returning to India, Meena Alexander taught in universities in Delhi and Hyderabad. Later, in 1979, she moved to New York with her American husband.
Given her experience of multifarious cultures, it is no surprise that the identity of self forms one of the core themes of Meena Alexander’s poetry and novels. The title of her autobiography Fault Lines also points to the boundaries, or cracks, in oneself, when one is not rooted to a particular culture.
Though Meena Alexander is best known for her poetry, she has also written two novels, a memoir, and literary criticism. She can speak Malayalam, Hindi, English, French and Arabic.
Works
- The Bird’s Bright Wing
- River and Bridge
- Nampally Road
- Manhattan Music
- The Shock of Arrival: Reflections on Postcolonial Experience
- Women in Romanticism: Mary Wollstonecraft, Dorothy Wordsworth and Mary Shelley
- Fault Lines
- Raw Silk
- Illiterate Heart
- Night-scene, the Garden
- House of a Thousand Doors
- I Root My Name
- Stone Roots
- The Poetic Self