Reetika Vazirani

{{Infobox writer

| name = Reetika Gina Vazirani

| image = Reetika Vazirani.jpg

| imagesize =

| caption =

| pseudonym =

| birth_date = 9 August 1962

| birth_place = Patiala, India

| death_date = {{death date and age|df=yes|2003|7|16|1962|8|9}}

| death_place = Chevy Chase, Maryland, United States

| occupation = Author

| nationality = American

| period =

| genre = Poetry

| movement =

| notableworks = White Elephants, World Hotel, Radha Says

| influences =

| website =

}}

Reetika Gina Vazirani (9 August 1962 – 16 July 2003)[http://ead.lib.virginia.edu/vivaxtf/view?docId=wm/viw00162.xml Earl Gregg Swem Library, College of William and Mary - Inventory of the Reetika Vazirani Papers] was an Indian-American immigrant poet and educator.{{cite web |title=Reetika Vazirani |url=https://poets.org/poet/reetika-vazirani |website=poets.org |access-date=14 February 2020}}

Life

Vazirani was born in Patiala, India in 1962. She was six-years-old when her family left Punjab in 1968 as part of a wave of Indians coming to the United States after its immigration laws loosened in 1965. The family settled, after a few interim stops, in White Oak, Illinois. Her father, Sunder Vazirani, was an oral surgeon who received his graduate education at the University of Illinois, later to become the assistant dean at Howard University's dental school. Reetika graduated from Springbrook High School in Silver Spring, Maryland and continued her education at Wellesley College, graduating in 1984. It is there she received a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to travel to India, Thailand, Japan, and China. She later earned an M.F.A. from the University of Virginia as a Hoyns Fellow.{{cite journal |title=Remebering Reetika Vazirani: National Press Club, Washington, DC, July 26, 2003 |publisher=jstor.org |jstor=3300649 |last1=Dove |first1=Rita |journal=Callaloo |year=2004 |volume=27 |issue=2 |pages=368–369 |doi=10.1353/cal.2004.0062 |s2cid=161932063 }}

Vazirani lived in Trenton, New Jersey, with her son Jehan, near the poet Yusef Komunyakaa, who was her partner and Jehan's father. There she taught creative writing as a visiting faculty member at The College of New Jersey.{{Cite web|title = A loss for words: Reetika Vazirani, poet and professor, commits suicide at 40|url = http://www.tcnjsignal.net/2003/09/09/alossforwordsreetikavaziranipoetandprofessorcommitssuicideat/|website = The Signal|access-date = 2016-02-07|first = Kristina|last = Fiore}} At the time of her death, Vazirani was Writer-in-Residence at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, with the intent of joining the English department at Emory University.{{cite web |title=Remembering Reetika Vazirani – A midnight wail across the cultural divide. |url=https://indiaunfinished.wordpress.com/2009/07/17/remembering-reetika-vazirani-a-midnight-wail-across-thea-cultural-divide/ |website=indiaunfinished.wordpress.com |date=18 July 2009 |access-date=15 February 2020}}

On 16 July 2003, Vazirani was housesitting in the Chevy Chase, Maryland,{{cite web|url=http://chicagopoetry.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=194&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0|title=Senseless tragedy strikes the American poetry scene|date=5 December 2004|publisher=chicagopoetry.com|access-date=2009-01-23|archive-date=1 October 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111001125836/http://chicagopoetry.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=194&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0|url-status=dead}} home of novelist Howard Norman and his wife, the poet, Jane Shore. There, Vazirani killed her two-year-old son, Jehan, by stabbing him multiple times, then fatally stabbed herself.{{cite web |title=The Failing Light: Why did a rising young poet plunge into despair, taking her own life and the life of her 2-year-old son? |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/the-failing-light-why-did-a-rising-young-poet-plunge-into-despair-taking-her-own-life-and-the-life-of-her-2-year-old-son/2015/01/15/2575a388-9d1f-11e4-96cc-e858eba91ced_story.html |work=washingtonpost.com |access-date=14 February 2020}}[http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/pipermail/new-poetry/2003-July.txt David A. Fahrenthold and Simone Weichselbaum In Final Hours, Despair Defeated Poet, 15 July 2003] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131207065155/http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/pipermail/new-poetry/2003-July.txt |date=7 December 2013 }}{{cite web |title=The Inscrutable Tragedy of Reetika Vazirani |url=https://longreads.com/2015/02/16/the-inscrutable-tragedy-of-reetika-vazirani/ |website=longreads.com |date=16 February 2015 |access-date=14 February 2020}}{{cite web |title=A loss for words: Reetika Vazirani, poet and professor, commits suicide at 40 |url=http://www.tcnjsignal.net/2003/09/09/alossforwordsreetikavaziranipoetandprofessorcommitssuicideat/ |website=tcnjsignal.net |access-date=15 February 2020}}

Works

Vazirani was the author of two poetry collections, White Elephants,{{cite web |title=White Elephants Reetika Vazirani |url=https://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/amit/books/vazirani-1996-white-elephants.html |website=cse.iitk.ac.in |access-date=15 February 2020}} winner of the 1995 Barnard New Women Poets Prize, and World Hotel (Copper Canyon Press, 2002),{{Cite web|title = World Hotel|url = https://www.coppercanyonpress.org/books/world-hotel-by-reetika-vazirani/|website = Copper Canyon Press|access-date = 2016-02-07}} winner of the 2003 Anisfield-Wolf book award. She was a contributing and advisory editor for Shenandoah, a book review editor for Callaloo, and a senior poetry editor for Catamaran, a journal of South Asian literature. She translated poetry from Urdu and had some of her poems translated into Italian.{{cite web |title=Reetika Vazirani |url=https://www.pshares.org/authors/reetika-vazirani |website=pshares.org |publisher=Ploughshares at Emerson College |access-date=15 February 2020}}{{cite web |title=Independence by Reetika Vazirani |url=https://www.theparisreview.org/poetry/832/independence-reetika-vazirani |website=theparisreview.org |access-date=15 February 2020}}

Her poem "Mouth-Organs and Drums" was published in the anthology Poets Against the War (Nation Books, 2003).{{cite web |title=Reetika Vazirani |url=http://www.poetsagainstthewar.org/displaypoem.asp?AuthorID=1592#453057478 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20070311080617/http://www.poetsagainstthewar.org/displaypoem.asp?AuthorID=1592#453057478|access-date=15 February 2020|archive-date = 11 March 2007}}

Vazirani's final collection of poetry, Radha Says, edited by Leslie McGrath and Ravi Shankar, was published in 2009 by Drunken Boat Media.{{cite web |title=Radha Says |url=https://www.thecafereview.com/radha-says/ |website=thecafereview.com |date=15 December 2016 |access-date=14 February 2020}}

Awards

2003, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award{{cite web |title=Reetika Vazirani |url=https://www.anisfield-wolf.org/books/world-hotel/ |website=anisfield-wolf.org |access-date=14 February 2020}}
1995, Barnard Women Poets Prize

She was a recipient of a Discovery/The Nation Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Poets & Writers Exchange Program Award, fellowships from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee writers conferences, the Glenna Luschei/Prairie Schooner Award for her essay, "The Art of Breathing,"{{cite journal |title=The Art of Breathing |publisher=jstor.org |jstor=40635929 |last1=Vazirani |first1=Reetika |journal=Prairie Schooner |year=2001 |volume=75 |issue=3 |pages=63–74 }} included in the anthology How We Live our Yoga (Beacon 2001). She also had a poem in The Best American Poetry 2000.{{cite web |title="My Flu" by Reetika Vazirani |url=https://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_best_american_poetry/2017/12/my-flu-by-reetika-vazirani.html |website=bestamericanpoetry.com |access-date=15 February 2020}}

References

External links

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8730-2003Jul17?language=printer The initial report in the Washington Post] about the murder/suicide {{dead link|date=October 2016}}
[https://web.archive.org/web/20110918160338/http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A30475-2004Feb10¬Found=true An article in the Washington Post], speculating about the murder/suicide
[http://www.drunkenboat.com/db10/08poe/vazirani/ Born], a poem from her final collection on Drunken Boat.
[http://www.nathanielturner.com/reetikavazirani.htm A profile on ChickenBones: a Journal] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160316234701/http://www.nathanielturner.com/reetikavazirani.htm |date=16 March 2016 }}, with two poems
[https://web.archive.org/web/20070311080617/http://www.poetsagainstthewar.org/displaypoem.asp?AuthorID=1592#453057478 The text of Mouth-Organs and Drums], from "Poets Against War"
[https://web.archive.org/web/20061229085731/http://www.sawnet.org/books/writing/sisterhood.html For our Sisterhood], a poem by Uma Parameswaran about Reetika Vazirani
[https://www.brunel.ac.uk/creative-writing/research/entertext/documents/entertext011/Reetika-Vazirani-Three-Poems-Nikos-at-42-To-Angelina-from-Nikos-in-his-Old-Age-It-is-a-young-country-and-we-cannot-bear-to-grow-old.pdf], Three Poems by Reetika Vazirani.
[https://books.google.com/books?id=_60PDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT3] Daughter-Mother-Maya-Seeta by Reetika Vazirani

Category:1962 births

Category:2003 murders in the United States

Category:2003 suicides

Category:2003 deaths

Category:20th-century American poets

Category:20th-century American women writers

Category:20th-century Indian poets

Category:20th-century Indian translators

Category:20th-century Indian women writers

Category:American female murderers

Category:American murderers of children

Category:American people of Sindhi descent