Published in 2020 (first published 1993)
336 pages
Meena Alexander was an internationally acclaimed poet, scholar, and writer. Born in Allahabad, India, and raised in India and Sudan, Alexander lived and worked in New York City, where she was Distinguished Professor of English at Hunter College and at the CUNY Graduate Center in the PhD program in English. She was the author of numerous collections of poetry, literary memoirs, essays, and works of fiction and literary criticism.
What is this book about?
Passionate, fierce, and lyrical, Meena Alexander’s memoir traces her evolution as a postcolonial writer from a privileged childhood in India to a turbulent adolescence in the Sudan and then to England and New York City. In this tenth-anniversary edition of Fault Lines, this Alexander challenges the assumptions of life as a South Asian American woman writer in a post-9-11 world. With poetic insight and an honesty that will galvanize readers—both familiar and new—Alexander reveals her difficult recovery from a long-buried childhood trauma that revolutionizes the entire landscape of her memory: of her family, of her writing process and the meaning of memoir, and of her very self, now and before.
