Meena Alexander

Meena Alexander was born Mary Elizabeth Alexander on 17 February 1951 in Allahabad, India, to George and Mary (Kuruvilla) Alexander, originally from Travancore in India.Ponzanesi, Sandra. "Alexander, Meena." In Lorna Sage, Germaine Greer, and Elaine Showalter (eds), The Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge, 1999. 10. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 28 February 2010. Her father was a meteorologist for the Indian government and her mother was a homemaker. Her paternal grandmother was in an arranged marriage by age eight to her paternal grandfather, who was a wealthy landlord. Her maternal grandmother, Kunju, died before Alexander was born, and had both completed higher education and been the first woman to become a member of the legislative assembly in Travancore State.{{cite journal |last1=Duncan |first1=Erika |title=A Portrait of Meena Alexander |journal=World Literature Today |date=1999 |volume=73 |issue=1 |pages=23–28 |doi=10.2307/40154471 |jstor=40154471 }} Her maternal grandfather was a theologian and social reformer who worked with Gandhi, and had been the principal of Marthoma Seminary in Kottayam; he gave Alexander a variety of books, and talked to her about serious topics such as mortality, the Buddha, and apocalypse, before he died when she was eleven years old.

Alexander lived in Allahabad and Kerala until she was five years old, when her family moved to Khartoum after her father accepted a post in the newly independent Sudan.{{cite news |title=Meena Alexander: Life Events |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/arts/features/womenwriters/alexander_life.shtml |access-date=12 July 2021 |work=BBC}} She continued to visit her grandparents in Kerala, was tutored at home on speaking and writing English, and finished high school in Khartoum at age 13. Alexander recalled to Erika Duncan of World Literature Today that she began writing poetry as a child after she tried to mentally compose short stories in Malayalam but felt unable to translate them into written English; without an ability to write in Malayalam, she instead began writing her stories as poems.

She enrolled in Khartoum University at age 13, and had some poems she wrote translated into Arabic (a language she could not read) and then published in a local newspaper.{{cite news |last1=Basu |first1=Lopamudra |title=Meena Alexander (1951-2018): The poet from India who lived and wrote with sensitivity for the world |url=https://scroll.in/article/903171/meena-alexander-1951-2018-the-poet-from-india-who-lived-and-wrote-with-sensitivity-for-the-world |access-date=28 September 2021 |work=Scroll.in |date=24 November 2018}} At age 15, she officially changed her name from Mary Elizabeth to Meena, the name she had been called at home.{{cite journal |last1=Valladares |first1=Michelle Yasmine |title=Remembering Meena Alexander |journal=WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly |date=Spring 2019 |volume=47 |issue=1 |pages=279–286 |id={{Project MUSE|722010}} |doi=10.1353/wsq.2019.0029 |s2cid=145938659 }} In 1969, she completed a bachelor's degree in English and French from Khartoum University. She began her PhD at age 18 in England. In 1970, at age 19, she had what she described as "the time-honored tradition of a young intellectual ... having a nervous breakdown", where for more than a month she lost the ability to read and retreated to the country to rest.{{cite journal |last1=Howe |first1=Florence |last2=Stanton |first2=Domna C. |last3=Robinson |first3=Lillian S. |last4=McKay |first4=Nellie |last5=Stimpson |first5=Catharine R. |last6=Alexander |first6=Meena |last7=Morgan |first7=Robin |last8=Hedges |first8=Elaine |last9=Ferguson |first9=Mary Anne |last10=Arenal |first10=Electa |last11=Wilson |first11=J. J. |last12=Tharu |first12=Susie |title=Books That Changed Our Lives |journal=Women's Studies Quarterly |date=Fall 1991 |volume=19 |issue=3 |pages=15–17 |jstor=40003298 }} She completed her PhD in British Romantic literature in 1973 at age 22 from University of Nottingham.{{cite journal |id={{Project MUSE|242230}} |last1=Shankar |first1=Lavina |title=Re-Visioning Memoirs Old and New: A Conversation with Meena Alexander |journal=Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism |date=2008 |volume=8 |issue=2 |pages=32–48 }}

After completing her PhD, Alexander returned to India, and was a lecturer in the English Department at Miranda House, University of Delhi in 1974, a lecturer in English and French at Jawaharlal Nehru University in 1975, a lecturer in English at the Central Institute of English at the University of Hyderabad, from 1975 to 1977, during the National Emergency in India, and a lecturer at the University of Hyderabad from 1977 to 1979. She published her first volumes of poetry in India through the Kolkata Writers Workshop, a publisher founded by P. Lal, a poet and professor of English at St. Xavier's College, Kolkata. She also met David Lelyveld, a historian on sabbatical from the University of Minnesota, while they were in Hyderabad, and they married in 1979. She then moved with her husband to New York City. In 2009, she reflected on her move to the United States in the late 1970s, stating "There was a whole issue of racism that shocked me out of my wits. I never thought of myself as a person of color. I was normally the majority where I lived."{{cite web|url=http://www.cuny.edu/news/publications/salute-to-scholars/winter09/profile.html|title=Profile: Poet Meena Alexander|date=Winter 2009|website=The City University of New York|access-date=24 November 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190128184523/http://www.cuny.edu/news/publications/salute-to-scholars/winter09/profile.html|archive-date=28 January 2019|url-status=dead}}

Alexander wrote poetry, prose, and scholarly works in English. Ranjit Hoskote said of her poetry, "Her language drew as much on English as it did on Hindi and Malayalam – I always heard, in her poems, patterns of breath that seemed to come from sources in Gangetic India, where she spent part of her childhood, and her ancestral Malabar." Alexander spoke Malayalam fluently, but her ability to read and write in Malayalam was limited. She also spoke French, Sudanese Arabic and Hindi.{{cite news |last1=The Wire Staff |title='The Angels Will Call on Me' – Meena Alexander, Indian-American Poet, Dies at 67 |url=https://thewire.in/culture/i-think-the-angels-will-call-on-me-meena-alexander-indian-american-poet-dies-at-67 |access-date=27 September 2021 |work=The Wire |date=22 November 2018}} While she lived in Khartoum, she had been taught to speak and write British English; in 2006, she told Ruth Maxey, "When I came to America, I found the language amazingly liberating. It was very exciting for me to hear American English, not that I can speak it well, but I think in it." In her 1992 essay, "Is there an Asian American Aesthetic?", she wrote of an "aesthetic of dislocation" as one aspect of the aesthetic, and "the other is that we have all come under the sign of America. [...] Here we are part of a minority, and the vision of being 'unselved' comes into our consciousness. It is from this consciousness that I create my work of art."{{cite journal |last1=Katrak |first1=Ketu H. |title=The Aesthetics of Dislocation: Writing the Hybrid Lives of South Asian Americans |journal=The Women's Review of Books |date=February 2002 |volume=19 |issue=5 |pages=5–6 |doi=10.2307/4023785 |jstor=4023785 }}

After moving to New York, Alexander was an assistant professor at Fordham University from 1980 until 1987, when she became an assistant professor in the English Department at Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY).{{cite journal |id={{Gale|H1000001213}} |title=Meena Alexander |journal=Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors |date=28 November 2018 }}{{cite news |id={{Gale|A494210535}} |last1=Harris |first1=Elizabeth A. |title=How CUNY Became Poetry U |work=The New York Times |date=4 June 2017}} She became an associate professor in 1989, and a professor in 1992. Beginning in 1990, she also became a lecturer in writing at Columbia University. She was appointed Distinguished Professor of English at Hunter College{{cite web |title=Meena Alexander |url=https://www.gc.cuny.edu/Page-Elements/Academics-Research-Centers-Initiatives/Doctoral-Programs/English/Faculty-by-Field/Meena-Alexander |website=Faculty by Field |publisher=The Graduate Center, CUNY |access-date=30 September 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180621150752/https://www.gc.cuny.edu/Page-Elements/Academics-Research-Centers-Initiatives/Doctoral-Programs/English/Faculty-by-Field/Meena-Alexander |archive-date=21 June 2018}} in 1999.

Some of her best known poetry collections include Illiterate Heart (2002). She also wrote the collection Raw Silk (2004), which includes a set of poems that relate to the September 11 attacks and the time afterwards.{{cite journal |last1=Gioseffi |first1=Daniela |title=In the Mercy of Time-Flute Music: An Interview with Meena Alexander |journal=World Literature Today |date=January 2006 |volume=80 |issue=1 |pages=46–48 |doi=10.2307/40159031 |jstor=40159031 }} In her 1986 collection House of a Thousand Doors: Poems and Prose Pieces, she republished several poems from her early works and her 1980 collection Stone Roots, as well as work previously published in journals in addition to new material. Alexander wrote two further books with poetry and prose: The Shock of Arrival: Reflections on Postcolonial Experience published in 1996,{{cite journal |last1=Malieckal |first1=Bindu |title=Review of The Shock of Arrival: Reflections on Postcolonial Experience by Meena Alexander |journal=MELUS |date=Winter 1999 |volume=24 |issue=4 |pages=192–194 |doi=10.2307/468186 |jstor=468186 }} and Poetics of Dislocation published in 2009.{{fact|date=January 2023}}

Alexander also published two novels, Nampally Road (1991), which was a Village Voice Literary Supplement Editor's Choice in 1991, and Manhattan Music (1997), as well as two academic studies: The Poetic Self: Towards a Phenomenology of Romanticism (1979), based on her dissertation, and Women in Romanticism: Mary Wollstonecraft, Dorothy Wordsworth and Mary Shelley (1989).{{cite news |last1=Roy |first1=Souradeep |title=A Poet at the Crossroad: Tribute to Meena Alexander |url=https://thewire.in/books/a-poet-at-the-crossroad-tribute-to-meena-alexander |access-date=1 October 2021 |work=The Wire |date=9 December 2018}} In 1993, Alexander published her autobiographical memoir, Fault Lines, and published an expanded second edition in 2003, with new material that addressed her previously-suppressed memories of childhood sexual abuse by her maternal grandfather and her reflections on the September 11 attacks.{{cite journal |last1=Maxey |first1=Ruth |last2=Alexander |first2=Meena |title=Interview: Meena Alexander |journal=MELUS |date=Summer 2006 |volume=31 |issue=2 |pages=21–39 |doi=10.1093/melus/31.2.21 |jstor=30029661 }} She also edited Indian Love Poems (2005) and Name Me A Word: Indian Writers Reflect on Writing (2018).{{cite news |last1=Daruwalla |first1=Keki N. |title=In memory of poet Meena Alexander |url=https://www.thehindu.com/books/books-authors/remembering-meena/article25687236.ece |access-date=1 October 2021 |work=The Hindu |date=8 December 2018}} Some of her poetry was adapted into music, including her poems "Impossible Grace"{{cite web |title=Faculty Member's Poem to Inspire Winning Composition |url=https://www.gc.cuny.edu/News/All-News/Detail?id=12774 |website=News |publisher=The Graduate Center, CUNY |access-date=1 October 2021 |date=27 August 2012}} and "Acqua Alta". Her work was the subject of critical analysis in the book Passage to Manhattan: Critical Essays on Meena Alexander, edited by Lopamudra Basu and Cynthia Leenerts and published in 2009.

Alexander read her poetry and spoke at a variety of literary forums, including Poetry International (London), Struga Poetry Evenings, Poetry Africa, Calabash Festival, Harbor Front Festival, and Sahitya Akademi. In 2013, she addressed the Yale Political Union, in a speech titled, "What Use Is Poetry?",{{cite news |last1=Berlatsky |first1=Noah |title=Poetry Isn't as Useless as a Lot of Poets Say It Is |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/09/poetry-isnt-as-useless-as-a-lot-of-poets-say-it-is/279539/ |access-date=1 October 2021 |work=The Atlantic |date=12 September 2013}} which was later published in slightly revised form in World Literature Today.{{cite news |last1=Alexander |first1=Meena |title=What Use Is Poetry? |url=https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2013/september/what-use-poetry-meena-alexander |access-date=1 October 2021 |work=World Literature Today |date=September 2013}} In 1998 she was a Member of the Jury for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature.{{cite journal |last1=Clark |first1=David Draper |title=The 1998 Neustadt International Prize for Literature: Jurors and Candidates |journal=World Literature Today |date=Winter 1998 |volume=72 |issue=1 |pages=67–78 |doi=10.2307/40153536 |jstor=40153536 }} She served as an Elector, American Poets' Corner, at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, New York.

She died in New York on 21 November 2018, at the age of 67,{{Cite news|url=https://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/life-style/memory-is-all-you-have/|title=Memory is all you have|date=23 November 2018|work=The Indian Express|access-date=26 November 2018|language=en-US}} and according to her husband, the cause was endometrial serous cancer.{{cite news |last1=Genzlinger |first1=Neil |title=Meena Alexander, Poet Who Wrote of Dislocation, Dies at 67 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/26/obituaries/meena-alexander-dead.html |access-date=27 September 2021 |work=The New York Times |date=26 November 2018}} In 2020, her poetry collection In Praise of Fragments was published, which includes some work previously published in journals or staged as performances, as well as new material.{{cite news |last1=Peeradina |first1=Saleem |title=In Praise of Fragments by Meena Alexander |url=https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2020/spring/praise-fragments-meena-alexander |access-date=30 September 2021 |work=World Literature Today |date=Spring 2020}}

Influences on her writing include Jayanta Mahapatra, Kamala Das, Adrienne Rich, Walt Whitman, and Galway Kinnell,{{cite web |title=Meena Alexander 1951–2018 |url=https://poets.org/poet/meena-alexander |website=Poets.org |publisher=Academy of American Poets |access-date=30 September 2021}} as well as Toru Dutt, Lalithambika Antherjanam, Sarojini Naidu, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Gloria Anzaldua, Leslie Marmon Silko, Assia Djebar, Edouard Glissant, Nawal El Saadawi, and Ngugi wa Thiong'o. In 2014, she discussed the influence of John Donne, John Berryman, Emily Dickinson, and Matsuo Bashō on her poetic work.

During the course of her career, Alexander was a University Grants Commission Fellow at Kerala University, Writer in Residence at the National University of Singapore, and a Frances Wayland Collegium Lecturer at Brown University.{{cite web |title=Meena Alexander - Biography |url=http://meenaalexander.com/biography/ |publisher=CUNY Academic Commons |access-date=28 September 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180616002127/http://meenaalexander.com/biography/ |archive-date=16 June 2018}} She also held the Martha Walsh Pulver Residency for a poet at Yaddo. In addition:

• 1979 Visiting fellow at the University of Paris-Sorbonne{{cite web |title=Meena Alexander (1951 - 2018) |url=http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/aasp/people/aasp-faculty/meena-alexander-english |website=Asian American Studies Program |publisher=Hunter College |access-date=28 September 2021}}
• 1988 Center for American Culture Studies, Columbia University, Writer in Residence
• 1993 MacDowell Colony fellow
• 1994 American College, Madurai, India, Poet in Residence
• 1995 Arts Council of England, International Writer in Residence
• 1995 Intercultural Resource Center, Columbia University, Artist/Humanist In Residence
• 1995 Minnesota Asian American Renaissance, Lila Wallace Writer in Residence
• 2003 Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Residency{{cite news |last1=Handal |first1=Nathalie |title=The City and the Writer: In New York City with Meena Alexander |url=https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/dispatches/article/the-city-and-the-writer-in-new-york-city-with-meena-alexander |access-date=1 October 2021 |work=Words Without Borders |date=18 December 2013}}
• 2008 Guggenheim Foundation Fellow{{Cite web|url=http://www.gf.org/fellows/193-meena-alexander|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20090211015416/http://gf.org/fellows/193-Meena-Alexander|url-status=dead|title=Guggenheim Foundation Fellows|archivedate=11 February 2009}}
• 2011 Fulbright Specialists Program{{cite news |title=Distinguished Professor Meena Alexander Receives Fulbright Specialists Award |url=http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/communications/pressroom/news/distinguished-professor-meena-alexander-receives-fulbright-specialists-award |access-date=28 September 2021 |work=Hunter College |date=22 February 2011}}
• 2014 National Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla
• 2016 Poet in Residence in Venice

Fault Lines, her memoir,{{cite news |title=Fault Lines: A Memoir |url=https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/meena-alexander/fault-lines-2/ |access-date=27 September 2021 |work=Kirkus Reviews |date=1 February 1993}} was chosen by Publishers Weekly as one of the Best Books of 1993, and her poetry collection Illiterate Heart won the 2002 PEN Open Book Award.{{cite journal |last1=Maxey |first1=Ruth |title=An Interview with Meena Alexander |journal=The Kenyon Review |date=Winter 2006 |volume=28 |issue=1 |url=https://kenyonreview.org/journal/winter-2006/selections/an-interview-with-meena-alexander/ |access-date=27 September 2021 }}{{Dead link|date=December 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }} In 2002, she was awarded the Imbongi Yesizwe Poetry International Award. She was the recipient of the 2009 Distinguished Achievement Award from the South Asian Literary Association for contributions to American literature.{{cite web|url=https://scroll.in/latest/903029/poet-essayist-meena-alexander-dies-at-67|title=Poet, essayist Meena Alexander dies at 67|author=Scroll Staff|date=22 November 2018 |access-date=24 November 2018}} In 2016, she received a Word Masala award from the Word Masala Foundation.{{cite news |last1=Chatterjee |first1=Debjani |title=Milestone for Indian diaspora poets |url=https://www.thehindu.com/features/friday-review/Milestone-for-Indian-diaspora-poets/article14488579.ece |access-date=1 October 2021 |work=The Hindu |date=14 July 2016}}{{cite web |title=Meena Alexander receives Word Masala Award and reads poems in the House of Lords on 22nd June 2016|date=24 October 2017 |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=416KHlX5FN0 |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211215/416KHlX5FN0 |archive-date=15 December 2021 |url-status=live|website=Yogesh Patel |publisher=YouTube |access-date=1 October 2021}}{{cbignore}} On 1 May 2024, she was honored with a Google Doodle, in honor of it being the first day of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.{{Cite web|url=https://www.upi.com/Entertainment_News/2024/05/01/meena-alexander-google-doodle/4751714561859/|title=Google celebrates poet Meena Alexander with a Doodle - UPI.com|website=UPI}}

{{Expand list|date=June 2018}}

• The Bird’s Bright Ring (1976) (long poem)
• I Root My Name (Calcutta: United Writers, 1977) (collection)
• Without Place (Calcutta: Writers Workshop, 1977) (long poem)
• In the Middle Earth (New Delhi: Enact, 1977) (performance piece)

• {{cite book |last1=Alexander |first1=Meena |title=Stone Roots |date=1981 |publisher=Arnold-Heinemann, India |isbn=978-0862491093}}
• {{cite book |last1=Alexander |first1=Meena |title=House of a Thousand Doors: Poems and Prose Pieces |date=1988 |publisher=Three Continents Press |isbn=9780894105548}}{{cite journal |last1=Perry |first1=John Oliver |title=Exiled By A Woman's Body: Substantial Phenomena in Meena Alexander's Poetry |journal=Journal of South Asian Literature |date=Winter 1986 |volume=21 |issue=1 |pages=125–132 |jstor=40872843 }}{{cite journal |last1=Rustomji-Kerns |first1=Roshni |title=Review of House of a Thousand Doors by Meena Alexander |journal=Journal of South Asian Literature |date=Fall 1991 |volume=26 |issue=1 |pages=370–378 |jstor=40873262 }}
• {{cite book |last1=Alexander |first1=Meena |title=River and Bridge |date=1996 |publisher=TSAR Publications |isbn=978-0920661567}}{{cite journal |last1=Perry |first1=John Oliver |title=Review of River and Bridge by Meena Alexander |journal=World Literature Today |date=1997 |volume=71 |issue=4 |pages=867–868 |doi=10.2307/40153494 |jstor=40153494 }}
• {{cite book |last1=Alexander |first1=Meena |title=Illiterate Heart |date=2002 |publisher=TriQuarterly |isbn=978-0810151178}}{{cite journal |last1=Basu |first1=Lopamudra |title=The Poet in the Public Sphere: A Conversation with Meena Alexander |journal=Social Text |date=Fall 2002 |volume=20 |issue=3 |pages=31–38 |doi=10.1215/01642472-20-3_72-31 |url=https://read.dukeupress.edu/social-text/article-abstract/20/3%20(72)/31/32645/The-Poet-in-the-Public-Sphere-A-Conversation-with |access-date=28 September 2021 |publisher=Duke University Press|s2cid=143254134 }}{{cite journal |last1=Swain |first1=Rabindra K |title=Review of Illiterate Heart by Meena Alexander |journal=Indian Literature |date=March 2004 |volume=48 |issue=2 |pages=202–207 |jstor=23341284 }}{{cite journal |last1=Sharma |first1=Prageeta |title=Review: Illiterate Heart: Where Translations Perish |journal=The Women's Review of Books |date=July 2002 |volume=19 |issue=10 |page=9 |doi=10.2307/4023875 |jstor=4023875 }}
• {{cite book |last1=Alexander |first1=Meena |title=Raw Silk |date=2004 |publisher=TriQuarterly |isbn=978-0810151567}}{{cite journal |last1=Pope |first1=Jacquelyn |title=Review of Raw Silk by Meena Alexander |journal=Harvard Review |date=2005 |volume=28 |pages=166–167 |jstor=27569029 }}
• {{cite book |last1=Alexander |first1=Meena |title=Quickly Changing River |date=2008 |publisher= TriQuarterly |isbn=978-0810124509}}{{cite web |last1=Subramaniam |first1=Arundhathi |title=Meena Alexander |url=https://india.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=10598&x=1 |website=India - Poetry International Web |publisher=Poetry International |access-date=28 September 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120208180632/https://india.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=10598&x=1 |archive-date=8 February 2012 |date=6 May 2008 |url-status=dead}}
• {{cite book |last1=Alexander |first1=Meena |title=Birthplace with Buried Stones |date=2013 |publisher=TriQuarterly/ Northwestern University |isbn=978-0-8101-5239-7}}{{cite news |title=Birthplace with Buried Stones |url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-8101-5239-7 |access-date=27 September 2021 |work=Publishers Weekly |date=23 December 2013}}{{cite news |last1=Vanasco |first1=Jeannie |title=Journeys |url=https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/70134/journeys |access-date=28 September 2021 |work=Poetry Foundation |date=16 July 2014}}
• {{cite book |last1=Alexander |first1=Meena |title=Atmospheric Embroidery |date=2018 |publisher=TriQuarterly |isbn=978-0810137608}}{{cite news |last1=Bugan |first1=Carmen |title=Review of Atmospheric Embroidery |url=https://harvardreview.org/book-review/atmospheric-embroidery/ |access-date=28 September 2021 |work=Harvard Review Online |date=11 April 2019}}
• {{cite book |last1=Alexander |first1=Meena |title=In Praise of Fragments |date=2020 |publisher=Nightboat Books |isbn=978-1643620121}}

• {{cite book |last1=Alexander |first1=Meena |title=The Storm: A Poem in Five Parts |date=1989 |publisher=Red Dust |location=New York |isbn=9780873760621}}
• {{cite book |last1=Alexander |first1=Meena |title=Night-Scene, the Garden |date=1992 |publisher=Red Dust |location=New York |isbn=978-0873760744}}{{cite journal |last1=King |first1=Bruce |title=Review of Night-Scene, the Garden by Meena Alexander |journal=World Literature Today |date=Spring 1993 |volume=67 |issue=2 |page=444 |doi=10.2307/40149305 |jstor=40149305 }}
• {{cite book |last1=Alexander |first1=Meena |translator-last1=Fazzini |translator-first1=Marco |title=Otto poesie da «Quickly changing river» |date=2011 |publisher=Sinopia di Venezia|isbn=9788895495330 |language=Italian}}{{cite web |title=Faculty Book: Meena Alexander |url=https://www.gc.cuny.edu/Page-Elements/Academics-Research-Centers-Initiatives/Masters-Programs/Women-s-and-Gender-Studies/Program-News/Detail?id=6279 |website=Women's and Gender Studies |publisher=The Graduate Center, CUNY |access-date=1 October 2021}}
• Impossible Grace: Jerusalem Poems (Al-Quds University, 2012)
• Shimla (2012)
• {{cite book |last1=Alexander |first1=Meena |title=Dreaming in Shimla: Letter to my Mother |date=2015 |publisher=Indian Institute of Advanced Study |isbn=978-9382396314}}

• {{cite book |last1=Alexander |first1=Meena |title=The Shock of Arrival: Reflections on Postcolonial Experience |date=1996 |publisher=South End Press |isbn=978-0-89608-545-9}}{{cite news |title=The Shock of Arrival: Reflections on Postcolonial Experience |url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-89608-545-9 |access-date=27 September 2021 |work=Publishers Weekly |date=28 June 1999}}{{cite journal |last1=Sabo |first1=Oana |title=Creativity and Place: Meena Alexander's Poetics of Migration |journal=Interdisciplinary Literary Studies |date=2016 |volume=18 |issue=1 |pages=67–80 |url=https://www.muse.jhu.edu/article/611218 |access-date=29 September 2021 |publisher=Penn State University Press|doi=10.5325/intelitestud.18.1.0067 |s2cid=147575835 }}
• {{cite book |last1=Alexander |first1=Meena |title=Poetics of Dislocation |date=2009 |publisher=University of Michigan Press |isbn=978-0472070763}}{{cite journal |last1=Perez |first1=Richard |title=Review of Poetics of Dislocation |journal=MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S. |date=Spring 2011 |volume=36 |issue=1 |pages=237–239 |doi=10.1353/mel.2011.0007 |s2cid=161140031 |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/424970 |access-date=29 September 2021}}

• {{cite book |last1=Alexander |first1=Meena |title=Nampally Road |date=1991 |publisher=Mercury House |isbn=978-0-916515-82-9}}{{cite news |title=Nampally Road |url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-916515-82-9 |access-date=27 September 2021 |work=Publishers Weekly |date=1 January 1991}}{{cite journal |last1=Perry |first1=John Oliver |title=Review of Nampally Road by Meena Alexander |journal=World Literature Today |date=Spring 1991 |volume=65 |issue=2 |pages=364–365 |doi=10.2307/40147314 |jstor=40147314 }}Nanda, Aparajita. "Of a 'Voice' and 'Bodies': A Postcolonial Critique of Meena Alexander's Nampally Road". In Merete Falck Borch, Eva Rask, And Bruce Clunies Ross (eds), Bodies and Voices: the Force-Field of Representation and Discourse in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies. New York and Amsterdam: Rodopi Press, 2008. 119–125.
• {{cite book |last1=Alexander |first1=Meena |title=Manhattan Music |date=1996 |publisher=Mercury House |isbn=978-1-56279-092-9}}{{cite news |title=Manhattan Music |url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-56279-092-9 |access-date=27 September 2021 |work=Publishers Weekly |date=1 January 1996}}{{cite news |last1=Iyengar |first1=Sunil |title=Indians in Three Worlds |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1997/04/06/indians-in-three-worlds/6efc07ca-32df-4474-8669-54c14af92d3d/ |access-date=28 September 2021 |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=6 April 1997}}{{cite journal |last1=Rao |first1=Susheela N. |title=Review of Manhattan Music by Meena Alexander |journal=World Literature Today |date=Spring 1998 |volume=72 |issue=2 |pages=456–457 |doi=10.2307/40153980 |jstor=40153980 }}{{cite journal |last1=Shankar |first1=Lavina Dhingra |title=Postcolonial diasporics "writing in search of a homeland";: Meena Alexander's Manhattan Music, Fault Lines, and The Shock of Arrival |journal=Lit: Literature Interpretation Theory |date=2001 |volume=12 |issue=3 |pages=285–312 |doi=10.1080/10436920108580293 |s2cid=162387004 |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10436920108580293 |access-date=1 October 2021}}

• {{cite book |last1=Alexander |first1=Meena |title=Fault Lines |date=1993 |publisher=Feminist Press |isbn=1-55861-058-8}}{{cite news |title=Fault Lines: A Memoir |url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-55861-058-3 |access-date=27 September 2021 |work=Publishers Weekly |date=28 February 2000}}{{cite journal |last1=Rao |first1=Susheela N. |title=Review of Fault Lines: A Memoir by Meena Alexander |journal=World Literature Today |date=1994 |volume=68 |issue=4 |pages=883 |doi=10.2307/40150813 |jstor=40150813 }}{{cite journal |last1=Natarajan |first1=Nalini |title=Review of Fault Lines by Meena Alexander |journal=MELUS |date=1995 |volume=20 |issue=1 |pages=143–145 |doi=10.2307/467864 |jstor=467864 }}{{cite book |last1=Maxey |first1=Ruth |title=South Asian Atlantic Literature, 1970-2010 |date=2011 |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |hdl=20.500.12657/31775 |isbn=9781474423557 |url=http://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/31775 |access-date=1 October 2021}}Maan, Ajit K. "Fault Lines." In Internarrative Identity. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1999. 19–38.
• {{cite book |last1=Alexander |first1=Meena, wa Thiong'o, Ngũgĩ |title=Fault Lines |date=2003 |publisher=The Feminist Press |isbn=978-1558614543|edition=2nd }}{{cite news |last1=Shah |first1=Radhika |title=Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Feminist Press |url=https://lithub.com/celebrating-the-50th-anniversary-of-feminist-press/ |access-date=28 September 2021 |work=Literary Hub |date=6 January 2020}}{{cite book |last1=Ponzanesi |first1=Sandra |title=Paradoxes of Postcolonial Culture: Contemporary Women Writers of the Indian and Afro-Italian Diaspora |date=2004 |publisher=State University of New York Press |location=Albany, NY |isbn=978-0-7914-6201-0 |pages=51–64 |chapter=The Shock of Arrival: Meena Alexander, Fault Lines}}

===Criticism===

• {{cite book |last1=Alexander |first1=Meena |title=The Poetic Self: Towards a Phenomenology of Romanticism |date=1979 |publisher=Humanities Press |location=Atlantic Highlands, N.J. |isbn=9780391017542}}
• {{cite book |last1=Alexander |first1=Meena |title=Women in Romanticism: Mary Wollstonecraft, Dorothy Wordsworth and Mary Shelley |date=1989 |publisher=Macmillan Education |location=Basingstoke |isbn=9780333391693}}

• {{cite book |editor1-last=Alexander |editor1-first=Meena |title=Indian Love Poems |date=2005 |publisher=Alfred A. Knopf |location=New York |isbn=9781400042258}} (US) {{ISBN|9781841597577}} (UK)
• {{cite book |editor1-last=Alexander |editor1-first=Meena |title=Name Me A Word: Indian Writers Reflect on Writing |date=2018 |publisher=Yale University Press |location=New Haven |isbn=9780300222586}}

• Introduction to Truth Tales: Stories by Contemporary Indian Women Writers (Feminist Press, 1990)
• Foreword to Miriam Cooke and Roshni Rustomji-Kerns (eds), Blood into Ink, Twentieth Century South Asian and Middle Eastern Women Write War (Westview Press, 1994)
• "Bodily Inventions: A Note on the Poems", Special Issue of The Asian Pacific American Journal vol. 5 no. 1, Spring/Summer 1996
• Preface to Cast Me Out If You Will!: Stories and Memoir Pieces by Lalithambika Antherjanam (Feminist Press, 1998)
• Foreword to Indian Love Poems (Knopf, 2005)

• {{cite book |editor1-last=Gopi Kottoor|title=A New Book of Indian Poems in English |date=2000 |publisher=Writers Workshop |isbn=9788175957282}}
• {{cite book |editor1-last=Anand Kumar |title=Travelogue : The Grand Indian Express |date=2017 |publisher=Authorspress |isbn=978-9381030776}}

Alexander was described as "undoubtedly one of the finest poets of contemporary times" in 2015 by The Statesman.{{cite web|url=https://www.thestatesman.com/supplements/writing-a-poem-is-itself-an-act-of-hope-83790.html|title='Writing a poem is itself an act of hope' - The Statesman|website=The Statesman|date=19 August 2015|access-date=24 November 2018}} About her work, Maxine Hong Kingston 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." Of the poems in her book Atmospheric Embroidery, A. E. Stallings wrote: "Alexander's language is precise, her syntax is pellucid, and her poems address all of the senses, offering a simultaneous richness and simplicity." Vijay Seshadri wrote: "The beautiful paradox of Meena Alexander’s art has always been found in the distillation of her epic human and spiritual experience into pure and exquisite lyricism. That paradox and that lyricism are on triumphant display in this book."{{cite web|url=http://www.nupress.northwestern.edu/content/atmospheric-embroidery|title=Atmospheric Embroidery|publisher=Northwestern University Press|website=nupress.northwestern.edu|access-date=24 November 2018|archive-date=24 July 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180724032224/http://www.nupress.northwestern.edu/content/atmospheric-embroidery|url-status=dead}} As to the anthology she edited, Name Me A Word: Indian Writers Reflect on Writing, Simon Gikandi wrote: "Name Me A Word is an indispensable guide for readers of Indian writing, animating the powerful impulses of the country's famous writers and introducing the multiple voices that went into the making of the most important literature of our time."{{cite book|title=Name Me a Word: Indian Writers Reflect on Writing|date=24 July 2018|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn = 978-0300222586}}

• Passage to Manhattan: Critical Essays on Meena Alexander. Lopamudra Basu and Cynthia Leenerts (eds). Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009.
• {{cite book |last1=Maxey |first1=Ruth |title=South Asian Atlantic Literature, 1970-2010 |date=2011 |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |hdl=20.500.12657/31775 |isbn=9781474423557 |url=http://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/31775}}
• Guiyou Huang, ed., Asian-American Poets: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook (Greenwood Press, 2002)

At the time of her death, Alexander was survived by her mother, her husband, their children Adam Lelyveld and Svati Lelyveld, and her sister Elizabeth Alexander.

{{portal|Biography|Literature|Poetry|}}

• Indian English Literature
• Indian literature
• Indian poetry in English

{{Reflist}}

• Ali, Zainab, and Dharini Rashish. "Meena Alexander." In Words Matter: Conversations with Asian American Writers. Ed. King-Kok Cheung. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, with UCLA Asian American Studies Center; 2000. 69–91.
• Poddar, Prem. "[http://www.himalmag.com/Questions-of-location_nw1772 Questions of Location: A Conversation with Meena Alexander]." HIMAL South Asia 14.1 (January 2001).{{dead link|date=January 2018 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}
• 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.

• [https://meenaalexander.commons.gc.cuny.edu/ Meena Alexander CUNY website]
• [https://poets.org/poet/meena-alexander Academy of American Poets profile for Meena Alexander]
• [https://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9002764/Meena-Alexander Encyclopædia Britannica entry for Meena Alexander]
• {{cite journal |last1=Alexander |first1=Meena |title=Selected poems from Raw Silk |journal=Studio |date=2007 |volume=1 |issue=1 |url=http://ccfi.educ.ubc.ca/publication/studio/v01n01/studio2a.html |publisher=The University of British Columbia|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120220003856/http://ccfi.educ.ubc.ca/publication/studio/v01n01/studio2a.html |archive-date=20 February 2012 }}
• {{cite journal |last1=Alexander |first1=Meena |title=Zone of Radical Illiteracy: Poem Out of Place |journal=The Scholar & Feminist Online |date=Winter 2003 |volume=1 |issue=1 |url=http://www.barnard.edu/sfonline/wth/alexanes.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100307100204/http://www.barnard.edu/sfonline/wth/alexanes.htm |archive-date=7 March 2010 |quote=First Published in Connect, Arts International, New York: Inaugural issue on Translation. December 2000.}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Alexander, Meena}}

Category:1951 births

Category:2018 deaths

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