Meena Alexander
Encyclopedia
Meena Alexander is an internationally acclaimed poet
, scholar, and writer
. Born in Allahabad
, India
, and raised in India
and Sudan
, Alexander lives and works in New York City
, where she is Distinguished Professor of English at Hunter College
in the MFA program in Creative Writing and at the CUNY Graduate Center
in the PhD program in English. She is the author of numerous collections of poetry, literary memoirs, essays, and works of fiction and literary criticism.
, South India. She lived in Allahabad
and Kerala
until she was almost five when her father’s work—as a scientist for the Indian government—took the family to Khartoum
in newly independent Sudan. In 1964, when she was only thirteen, Alexander enrolled in Khartoum University, where she studied English and French literature. There she wrote her first poems, which were translated into Arabic
and published in a local newspaper. After graduating with a BA Honors from Khartoum University in 1969, she moved to England and began doctoral study at Nottingham University. She earned a PhD in English in 1973—at the age of twenty-two—with a dissertation in Romantic literature that she would later develop and publish as The Poetic Self. She then moved to India and taught at several universities, including the University of Delhi
and the University of Hyderabad
. During the five years she lived in India she published her first three books of poetry: The Bird's Bright Ring (1976), I Root My Name (1977), and Without Place (1978). In 1979 she was a visiting fellow at the University of Paris-Sorbonne. The following year she moved to New York
City and became an assistant professor at Fordham University
, where she remained until 1987 when she became an assistant professor in the English Department at Hunter College, the City University of New York
(CUNY). Two years later she joined the graduate faculty of the PhD program in English at the CUNY Graduate Center. In 1992 she was made full professor of English and Women’s Studies. She was appointed Distinguished Professor of English in 1999 and continues to teach in the PhD program at the Graduate Center and the MFA program at Hunter College. Over the years she has also taught poetry in the Writing Division in the School of the Arts at Columbia University
. Since moving to New York, Alexander has been a prolific author, publishing six more volumes of poetry, two books of literary criticism, two books of lyric essays, two novels, and a memoir.
Alexander is known for lyrical writing that deals with migration, its impact on the subjectivity of the writer, and the sometimes violent events that compel people to cross borders. Though confronting such stark and difficult issues, her writing is sensual, polyglot, and maintains a generous spirit. About her work, Maxine Hong Kingston
has said: "Meena Alexander sings of countries, foreign and familiar, places where the heart and spirit live, and places for which one needs a passport and visas. Her voice guides us far away and back home. The reader sees her visions and remembers and is uplifted." Alexander has been influenced and mentored by the Indian poets Jayanta Mahapatra
and Kamala Das
, as well as the American poets Adrienne Rich
and Galway Kinnell
.
Among her best known works are the volumes of poetry Illiterate Heart (2002) and Raw Silk (2004). Her latest volume of poetry is Quickly Changing River (2008). She has edited a volume of poems in the Everyman Series, Indian Love Poems (2005), and published a volume of essays and poems on the themes of migration and memory called The Shock of Arrival: Reflections on Postcolonial Experience (2006). In 1993 Alexander published her autobiographical memoir, Fault Lines (significantly revised in 2003 to incorporate new material). She has published two novels, Nampally Road (1991)—which was a Village Voice Literary Supplement Editor’s Choice—and Manhattan Music (1997), and two academic studies, The Poetic Self (1979) and Women in Romanticism (1989). Fault Lines was chosen by Publishers Weekly
as one of the best books of the year in 1993. Illiterate Heart won the 2002 PEN Open Book Award.
Alexander has read at Poetry International (London), Struga Poetry Evenings, Poetry Africa, Calabash Festival, Harbor Front Festival, Sahitya Akademi (India) and other international gatherings. She has received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation
, Fulbright Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation
, Arts Council England
, National Endowment for the Humanities
, American Council of Learned Societies
, National Council for Research on Women, New York State Council on the Arts
, New York Foundation for the Arts
, Ledig-Rowohlt Foundation. She was in residence at the MacDowell Colony
and has held the Martha Walsh Pulver residency for a poet at Yaddo
. She has been a Visiting Fellow at the Sorbonne (Paris IV), Frances Wayland Collegium Lecturer at Brown University
, Writer in Residence at the Center for American Culture Studies at Columbia University, University Grants Commission Fellow at Kerala University
, and Writer in Residence at the National University of Singapore
. In 1998 she was a Member of the Jury for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature
. She has served as an Elector, American Poets Corner, at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, New York. She was the recipient of the 2009 Literary Excellence Award from the South Asian Literary Association (an organization allied to the Modern Languages Association) for contributions to American literature.
Her new book, Poetics of Dislocation, was published in 2009 by the University of Michigan Press
as part of its Poets on Poetry Series. Also in 2009 Cambridge Scholars Publishing brought out an anthology of scholarship on her work titled Passage to Manhattan: Critical Essays on Meena Alexander.
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, scholar, and writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
. Born in Allahabad
Allahabad
Allahabad , or Settled by God in Persian, is a major city of India and is one of the main holy cities of Hinduism. It was renamed by the Mughals from the ancient name of Prayaga , and is by some accounts the second-oldest city in India. It is located in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh,...
, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, and raised in India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
and Sudan
Sudan
Sudan , officially the Republic of the Sudan , is a country in North Africa, sometimes considered part of the Middle East politically. It is bordered by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the northeast, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the east, South Sudan to the south, the Central African Republic to the...
, Alexander lives and works in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, where she is Distinguished Professor of English at Hunter College
Hunter College
Hunter College, established in 1870, is a public university and one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York, located on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Hunter grants undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate degrees in more than one hundred fields of study, and is recognized...
in the MFA program in Creative Writing and at the CUNY Graduate Center
CUNY Graduate Center
The Graduate Center of the City University of New York brings together graduate education, advanced research, and public programming to midtown Manhattan hosting 4,600 students, 33 doctoral programs, 7 master's programs, and 30 research centers and institutes...
in the PhD program in English. She is the author of numerous collections of poetry, literary memoirs, essays, and works of fiction and literary criticism.
Biography
Meena Alexander was born into a Syrian Christian family from KeralaKerala
or Keralam is an Indian state located on the Malabar coast of south-west India. It was created on 1 November 1956 by the States Reorganisation Act by combining various Malayalam speaking regions....
, South India. She lived in Allahabad
Allahabad
Allahabad , or Settled by God in Persian, is a major city of India and is one of the main holy cities of Hinduism. It was renamed by the Mughals from the ancient name of Prayaga , and is by some accounts the second-oldest city in India. It is located in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh,...
and Kerala
Kerala
or Keralam is an Indian state located on the Malabar coast of south-west India. It was created on 1 November 1956 by the States Reorganisation Act by combining various Malayalam speaking regions....
until she was almost five when her father’s work—as a scientist for the Indian government—took the family to Khartoum
Khartoum
Khartoum is the capital and largest city of Sudan and of Khartoum State. It is located at the confluence of the White Nile flowing north from Lake Victoria, and the Blue Nile flowing west from Ethiopia. The location where the two Niles meet is known as "al-Mogran"...
in newly independent Sudan. In 1964, when she was only thirteen, Alexander enrolled in Khartoum University, where she studied English and French literature. There she wrote her first poems, which were translated into Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
and published in a local newspaper. After graduating with a BA Honors from Khartoum University in 1969, she moved to England and began doctoral study at Nottingham University. She earned a PhD in English in 1973—at the age of twenty-two—with a dissertation in Romantic literature that she would later develop and publish as The Poetic Self. She then moved to India and taught at several universities, including the University of Delhi
University of Delhi
The University of Delhi is a central university situated in Delhi, India and is funded by Government of India. Established in 1922, it offers courses at the undergraduate and post-graduate level. Vice-President of India Mohammad Hamid Ansari is the Chancellor of the university...
and the University of Hyderabad
University of Hyderabad
The University of Hyderabad is a post-graduate teaching and research institute in India. It was established by an act of the Parliament in 1974 as a Central University. The university also offers courses under distance learning programs...
. During the five years she lived in India she published her first three books of poetry: The Bird's Bright Ring (1976), I Root My Name (1977), and Without Place (1978). In 1979 she was a visiting fellow at the University of Paris-Sorbonne. The following year she moved to New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
City and became an assistant professor at Fordham University
Fordham University
Fordham University is a private, nonprofit, coeducational research university in the United States, with three campuses in and around New York City. It was founded by the Roman Catholic Diocese of New York in 1841 as St...
, where she remained until 1987 when she became an assistant professor in the English Department at Hunter College, the City University of New York
City University of New York
The City University of New York is the public university system of New York City, with its administrative offices in Yorkville in Manhattan. It is the largest urban university in the United States, consisting of 23 institutions: 11 senior colleges, six community colleges, the William E...
(CUNY). Two years later she joined the graduate faculty of the PhD program in English at the CUNY Graduate Center. In 1992 she was made full professor of English and Women’s Studies. She was appointed Distinguished Professor of English in 1999 and continues to teach in the PhD program at the Graduate Center and the MFA program at Hunter College. Over the years she has also taught poetry in the Writing Division in the School of the Arts at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
. Since moving to New York, Alexander has been a prolific author, publishing six more volumes of poetry, two books of literary criticism, two books of lyric essays, two novels, and a memoir.
Alexander is known for lyrical writing that deals with migration, its impact on the subjectivity of the writer, and the sometimes violent events that compel people to cross borders. Though confronting such stark and difficult issues, her writing is sensual, polyglot, and maintains a generous spirit. About her work, Maxine Hong Kingston
Maxine Hong Kingston
Maxine Hong Kingston is a Chinese American author and Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, where she graduated with a BA in English in 1962. Kingston has written three novels and several works of non-fiction about the experiences of Chinese immigrants living in the United...
has said: "Meena Alexander sings of countries, foreign and familiar, places where the heart and spirit live, and places for which one needs a passport and visas. Her voice guides us far away and back home. The reader sees her visions and remembers and is uplifted." Alexander has been influenced and mentored by the Indian poets Jayanta Mahapatra
Jayanta Mahapatra
Jayanta Mahapatra is one of the best known Indian English poets.By all standards, Mahapatra's tryst with the muse came rather late in life. He took to writing poetry when he was into his 40s...
and Kamala Das
Kamala Das
Kamala Suraiyya was a major Indian English poet and literateur and at the same time a leading Malayalam author from Kerala state, South India...
, as well as the American poets Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Cecile Rich is an American poet, essayist and feminist. She has been called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century."-Early life:...
and Galway Kinnell
Galway Kinnell
Galway Kinnell is an American poet. He was Poet Laureate of Vermont from 1989 to 1993. An admitted follower of Walt Whitman, Kinnell rejects the idea of seeking fulfillment by escaping into the imaginary world. His best-loved and most anthologized poems are "St...
.
Among her best known works are the volumes of poetry Illiterate Heart (2002) and Raw Silk (2004). Her latest volume of poetry is Quickly Changing River (2008). She has edited a volume of poems in the Everyman Series, Indian Love Poems (2005), and published a volume of essays and poems on the themes of migration and memory called The Shock of Arrival: Reflections on Postcolonial Experience (2006). In 1993 Alexander published her autobiographical memoir, Fault Lines (significantly revised in 2003 to incorporate new material). She has published two novels, Nampally Road (1991)—which was a Village Voice Literary Supplement Editor’s Choice—and Manhattan Music (1997), and two academic studies, The Poetic Self (1979) and Women in Romanticism (1989). Fault Lines was chosen by Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...
as one of the best books of the year in 1993. Illiterate Heart won the 2002 PEN Open Book Award.
Alexander has read at Poetry International (London), Struga Poetry Evenings, Poetry Africa, Calabash Festival, Harbor Front Festival, Sahitya Akademi (India) and other international gatherings. She has received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was founded in 1925 by Mr. and Mrs. Simon Guggenheim in memory of their son, who died April 26, 1922...
, Fulbright Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation
Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is a prominent philanthropic organization and private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The preeminent institution established by the six-generation Rockefeller family, it was founded by John D. Rockefeller , along with his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr...
, Arts Council England
Arts Council England
Arts Council England was formed in 1994 when the Arts Council of Great Britain was divided into three separate bodies for England, Scotland and Wales. It is a non-departmental public body of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport...
, National Endowment for the Humanities
National Endowment for the Humanities
The National Endowment for the Humanities is an independent federal agency of the United States established by the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965 dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities. The NEH is located at...
, American Council of Learned Societies
American Council of Learned Societies
The American Council of Learned Societies , founded in 1919, is a private nonprofit federation of seventy scholarly organizations.ACLS is best known as a funder of humanities research through fellowships and grants awards. ACLS Fellowships are designed to permit scholars holding the Ph.D...
, National Council for Research on Women, New York State Council on the Arts
New York State Council on the Arts
The New York State Council on the Arts is an arts council serving the U.S. state of New York. It was established in 1960 through a bill introduced in the New York State Legislature by New York State Senator MacNeil Mitchell , with backing from Governor Nelson Rockefeller, and began its work in 1961...
, New York Foundation for the Arts
New York Foundation for the Arts
The New York Foundation for the Arts was created in conjunction the in 1971. The organization gives grants to individual artists and writers and developing arts organizations with a mission to '.'-NYFA's Programs:...
, Ledig-Rowohlt Foundation. She was in residence at the MacDowell Colony
MacDowell Colony
The MacDowell Colony is an art colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, U.S.A., founded in 1907 by Marian MacDowell, pianist and wife of composer Edward MacDowell. She established the institution and its endowment chiefly with donated funds...
and has held the Martha Walsh Pulver residency for a poet at Yaddo
Yaddo
Yaddo is an artists' community located on a 400 acre estate in Saratoga Springs, New York. Its mission is "to nurture the creative process by providing an opportunity for artists to work without interruption in a supportive environment."...
. She has been a Visiting Fellow at the Sorbonne (Paris IV), Frances Wayland Collegium Lecturer at Brown University
Brown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
, Writer in Residence at the Center for American Culture Studies at Columbia University, University Grants Commission Fellow at Kerala University
Kerala University
The University of Kerala, formerly the University of Travancore, is an affiliating university located in Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, India. It was established in 1937, long before the birth of the state of Kerala in India...
, and Writer in Residence at the National University of Singapore
National University of Singapore
The National University of Singapore is Singapore's oldest university. It is the largest university in the country in terms of student enrollment and curriculum offered....
. In 1998 she was a Member of the Jury for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature
Neustadt International Prize for Literature
The Neustadt International Prize for Literature is a biennial award for literature sponsored by the University of Oklahoma and its international literary publication, World Literature Today. It is widely considered to be the most prestigious international literary prize after the Nobel Prize in...
. She has served as an Elector, American Poets Corner, at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, New York. She was the recipient of the 2009 Literary Excellence Award from the South Asian Literary Association (an organization allied to the Modern Languages Association) for contributions to American literature.
Her new book, Poetics of Dislocation, was published in 2009 by the University of Michigan Press
University of Michigan Press
The University of Michigan Press is part of the University of Michigan Library and serves as a primary publishing unit of the University of Michigan, with special responsibility for the creation and promotion of scholarly, educational, and regional books and other materials in digital and print...
as part of its Poets on Poetry Series. Also in 2009 Cambridge Scholars Publishing brought out an anthology of scholarship on her work titled Passage to Manhattan: Critical Essays on Meena Alexander.
Nampally Road
In this semi-autobiographical novel, set in Indian during the civil unrest of the 1970s, a young English teacher named Mira returns from school in England to take a teaching job in Hyderabad. The plot develops around the arrest and torture of an innocent bystander, Rameeza, whose plight inspires the local activists, one of whom is Mira's boyfriend and fellow teacher, Ramu. Meanwhile, Mira's mentor, Durgabai, resists oppression by ministering at a local shelter to victimized women. Mira wonders how to reconcile the world she lives in with her job teaching English Romantic poetry and eventually leaves the school to help free Rameeza; she aligns with Durgabai and rejects the type of nationalism that sees victimized women as opportunities instead of as people.Poetry
- Stone Roots (New Delhi, (1980)
- House of a Thousand Doors (1988)
- The Storm: A Poem in Five Parts (Short Work Series) (1989)
- Night-Scene: The Garden (Short Work Series) (1992)
- River and Bridge (1995/ 1996)
- Illiterate Heart (2002)
- Raw Silk (2004)
- Quickly Changing River ( 2008)
Poetry and essays
- The Shock of Arrival: Reflections on Postcolonial Experience (1996)
- Poetics of Dislocation (University of Michigan Press, 2009)
Autobiography
Novels
- Nampally Road (1991)
- Manhattan Music (1997)
Criticism
- Women in Romanticism: Mary Wollstonecraft, Dorothy Wordsworth and Mary Shelley (1989)
- The Poetic Self: Towards a Phenomenology of Romanticism (1979)
Prefaces and introductory notes
- Foreword to Indian Love Poems (Everyman’s Library/Knopf, 2005)
- 'Buried Voices': Preface to Cast Me Out If You Will!: Stories and Memoir Pieces by Lalithambika Antherjanam (New York: Feminist Press, 1998)
- 'Bodily Inventions: A Note on the Poems' Guest Poetry Editor to 'The Body' -- Special Issue of The Asian Pacific American Journal vol.5 no.1, spring/summer 1996
- 'Translating Violence' Foreword to Blood into Ink, Twentieth Century South Asian and Middle Eastern Women Write War, eds. Miriam Cooke and Roshni Rustomji-Kerns ( Boulder: Westview Press, Spring l994)
- Introduction to Truth Tales : Stories by Contemporary Indian Women Writers (New York: Feminist Press, Fall 1990) Editors Choice of Publisher's Weekly, 1990
Further reading
- Passage to Manhattan: Critical Essays on Meena Alexander. Eds. Lopamudra Basu and Cynthia Leenerts. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009.
- Ali, Zainab and Dharini Rashish. "Meena Alexander." In Words Matter: Conversations with Asian American Writers. Ed. King-Kok Cheung. Honolulu, HI: U of Hawaii P, with UCLA Asian American Studies Center; 2000. 69-91.
- Maan, Ajit K. "Fault Lines." In Internarrative Identity. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1999. 19-38.
- Nanda, Aparajita. "Of a 'Voice' and 'Bodies': A Postcolonial Critique of Meena Alexander's Nampally Road. In Bodies and Voices: the Force-Field of Representation and Discourse in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies. Ed. Merete Falck Borch, Eva Rask, And Bruce Clunies Ross. New York and Amsterdam: Rodopi Press, 2008. 119-125.
- Poddar, Prem. "Questions of Location: A Conversation with Meena Alexander." HIMAL South Asia 14.1 (Jan. 2001). (http://www.himalmag.com/Questions-of-location_nw1772).
- Ponzanesi, Sandra. "The Shock of Arrival: Meena Alexander, Fault Lines." In Paradoxes of Postcolonial Culture: Contemporary Women Writers of the Indian and Afro-Italian Diaspora. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005. 51-64.
- Pope, Jacquelyn. "Raw Silk by Meena Alexander." Harvard Review 28 (Spring 2005) (http://hcl.harvard.edu/harvardreview).
- Shankar, Lavina Dhingra. "Postcolonial Diasporics 'Writing in Search of a Homeland': Meena Alexander's Manhattan Music, Fault Lines, and The Shock of Arrival." LIT 12 (2001): 285-312.
- Tabios, Eileen. "Gold Horizon: Interview with Meena Alexander." In Black Lightning: Poetry in Progress. Ed. Eileen Tabios. New York: Asian American Writers Workshop, 1998. 196-226.
- Young, Jeffrey. "Creating a Life through Literature." Chronicle of Higher Education (14 March 1997): B8.
Bibliographic listings (selected list)
- Cambridge Guide to Literature in English (Cambridge University PressCambridge University PressCambridge University Press is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII in 1534, it is the world's oldest publishing house, and the second largest university press in the world...
, 1993) - Interethnic Companion to Asian American Literature (Cambridge University PressCambridge University PressCambridge University Press is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII in 1534, it is the world's oldest publishing house, and the second largest university press in the world...
, 1997) - Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century Literature in English (Oxford University PressOxford University PressOxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
, 1996) - Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States (Oxford University PressOxford University PressOxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
, 1995) - Women Writers in the United States: A Timeline of Literary, Cultural and Social History (Oxford University PressOxford University PressOxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
, 1996)
External links
- Academy of American Poets
- Meena Alexander's Official Website
- Guggenheim Foundation Fellows
- CUNY Graduate Center PhD Program in English
- CUNY Profile, Distinguished Professors
- Encyclopedia Britannica
- Poetry International (India)
- BBC Chronology
- "Zone of Radical Illiteracy: Poem Out of Place" by Meena Alexander in The Scholar and Feminist Online—Writing Towards Hope
- Poems from Raw Silk in Studio
- Introduction to Passage to Manhattan: Critical Essays on Meena Alexander
- "The Poet in the Public Sphere: A Conversation with Meena Alexander"
- Interview with Ruth Maxey