Meena Alexander (1951–2018) was an Indian English poet and scholar. He is famous for his collections like Illiterate Heart and Raw Silk. She is known for her poems on dislocation and migration. He is considered one of the best expatriate writers of contemporary literature. He died on 21 November 2018 due to cancer.
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Wiki/Biography
Meena Alexander was born as Mary Alexander on Saturday, 17 February 1951 (age 67 at the time of death) in Allahabad, India. Their zodiac sign is Aquarius. He celebrated his 5th birthday on a ship in the Indian Ocean, when he traveled with his family from India to Sudan to visit his father who was posted there. She continued visiting her grandparents in Kerala, India. Mary was home-schooled in Khartoum to speak and write English. He completed high school at the age of 13; At the same age, he started his college at the University of Khartoum. When Alexander turned 15, she changed her name to Meena. In 1969, he earned a bachelor’s degree in English and French. After she turned 18, she moved to England to pursue a PhD in British Romantic Literature at the University of Nottingham. In 1973, Meena completed her PhD.
Family
Meena was born in a Syrian Christian family in Kerala, India.
parents and siblings
His father, George Alexander, was a Government of India meteorologist posted to a newly independent Sudan in 1956 and his mother, Mary Alexander, was a housewife. He had a sister, Elizabeth Alexander.
husband and children
Mina married Jewish American historian David Lelyveld in 1979. She met David at the Central Institute of English in Hyderabad, where she was a lecturer and he was on sabbatical from the University of Minnesota. After her marriage, Meena moved with her husband to New York City, where she lived most of her life and raised her children. Mina and David had two children, Adam Lelyveld and Swati Lelyveld.
Mina Alexander with her husband and children at their home in New York in 1986
other relatives
KK Kuruvilla
KK Kuruvilla was the maternal grandfather of Meena Alexander and the representative of the Mar Thoma Church at the International World Missionary Conference. Kuruvilla was a freedom fighter and social worker and an active member of the Indian National Congress. He was actively involved in the Indian independence movement and was a close associate of Mahatma Gandhi. On the night of January 16, 1937, Mahatma Gandhi stayed at the residence of KK Kuruvilla.
KK Kuruvilla
Kunju
Meena’s maternal grandmother Elizabeth, also known as Kunju, was the daughter of Rao Bahadur George Zakaria. She was the student secretary of the YWCA. In 1928, she was named as one of the first women legislators.
Religion
Meena Alexander followed Christianity.
livelihood
Write
Meena Alexander started writing poetry in her childhood. When he began graduate studies at the University of Khartoum, his poems were translated into Arabic and published in a local newspaper. His first collection of poems was published by Writers’ Workshop, Calcutta, a press founded by P. Lal, Professor of English at St. Xavier’s College. The time when Meena was teaching in India was a time of tension in India under the National Emergency; Imposed by the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, it led to restrictions on freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and other democratic forms of citizenship in India. During this time he wrote a novel, Nampally Road (1991), about the political conditions of India. Talking about the connection between Alexander’s book and the political challenges in India, author Geeta Hariharan said,
Nampally Road is the scenario in which Alexander’s young protagonist, Meera Kannadikal, must negotiate a quest that involves personal as well as political challenges, choices and discoveries. Nampally Road is also a place to live a special time. This street is in Hyderabad, a city with its own distinct history, physical and cultural experiences and hierarchies. The present day life of the city is a reflection of India in the grip of the seventies, a decade imprinted in the collective Indian memory with the experience of the Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi.
Nampally Road by Meena Alexander
Alexander’s experiences of chaos in his personal life and his desire for harmony can be easily felt in his literary works. Most of his poems and writings revolve around the themes of migration, trauma and reconciliation. Some of his published works include Stone Roots (1981), House of a Thousand Doors: Poems and Prose Pieces (1988), Raw Silk (2004), and Birthplace with Buried Stones (2013). He published his second novel, Manhattan Music, in 1996, based on the lives of Indian immigrants in the city. In 1993, Alexander published her autobiographical memoir, Fault Lines, and later in 2003, following the September 2011 attacks, she wrote an expanded version of her memoir in which she recounted her childhood experiences of experiencing sexual abuse by her maternal grandfather. Mentioned the events he was closely associated with and talked about the impact the September 2011 attacks had on everyone and everything. Meena Alexander was named a National Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study in 2014.
Alexander’s autobiographical memoir
In 2009, her work was criticized in the book Passage to Manhattan: Critical Essays on Meena Alexander, edited by Lopamudra Basu and Cynthia Leinaerts. Meena Alexander read her poems at many literary events and forums including Poetry International (London), Struga Poetry Evenings, Poetry Africa, Calabash Festival, Harbor Front Festival and Sahitya Akademi. His speech, titled “What is the Use of Poetry?”, which he addressed at Yale University in 2013, was published in World Literature Today.
Meena Alexander reading her poetry
His poems have been published in The New Yorker, Harvard Review, Kenyon Review, and Threepenny Review. After his death, his poetry collection “In Praise of Fragments” was published in 2020.
In Praise of Pieces by Mina Alexander
teaching
In 1974, after completing her PhD at the University of Nottingham, Meena returned to India and started working in the Department of English at Miranda House, University of Delhi. In 1975, she became a lecturer in French and English at Jawaharlal Nehru University, and from 1975 to 1977, she became a lecturer in English at the Central Institute of English, University of Hyderabad. After Alexander moved to New York, she became an assistant professor. at Fordham University from 1980 to 1987, when she became an assistant professor in the English Department at Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY). In 1989 she became an associate professor. In 1990, she also became a lecturer in writing at Columbia University. In 1999, she was appointed Distinguished Professor of English at Hunter College.
Awards, Honors, Achievements
- In 2002, his Illiterate Heart won the PEN Open Book Award.
- In 2009, he was awarded the Distinguished Achievement Award by the South Asian Literary Association.
- In 2016, the Word Masala Foundation honored him with the Word Masala Award.
- In 1993, her memoir Fault Lines was chosen one of the best books of 1993 by Publishers Weekly.
- In 2002, he was awarded the Imbongi Yesizwe Poetry International Award.
Death
Mina Alexander died of endometrial serous cancer on November 21, 2018 in New York City.
fact
- She spoke Malayalam, French, Arabic, English and Hindi.
- In 2015, The Statesman described him as,
Undoubtedly one of the finest poets of contemporary times”
- Alexander’s poetry has been adapted into musicals, including his poems Impossible Grace (2012) and Acqua Alta (2008).
- He served as an elector in the American Poets’ Corner at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York.
- In her childhood, Meena wanted to become a trapeze artist in the circus.
- She held the Martha Walsh Pulver Residency as a poet in Yaddo.
Categories: Biography
Source: vcmp.edu.vn