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Fault Lines
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An award-winning poet and scholar, MEENA ALEXANDER teaches in the Ph.D. program in English at the Graduate Center and the M.F.A. program at Hunter College. She was born in India and raised there as well as in Sudan. Earning a B.A. in English and French from Khartoum University and a Ph.D.

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Fault Lines

Meena Alexander

Preface by Ngugi wa Thiong'o

From India to Sudan to England, and finally to the island of Manhattan, poet Meena Alexander traces her growth as a writer and a woman over borders, through decades, and across cultures. Memories of a privileged childhood in postcolonial India and Africa surface amid her present life in multicultural America. This defiant writer continues to challenge the meaning of being born a female of color in a period of postcolonial turmoil—and of life as a South Asian American woman poet in a post-9/11 world.

"Meena Alexander will be a part of the history of global culture. She knows how it looks, feels, tastes, and sounds; how it creates and splits identity. Ten years ago, she published an extraordinary memoir, Fault Lines. Now, with her habitual courage and subtlety and eloquence, she has interlaced the memoir's words with new experiences, perceptions, pain, and visions. Fault Lines is faultless."

—Catharine R. Stimpson, University Professor and Dean of the Graduate School, New York University

"This new edition of Fault Lines shows us a poet intent on seeing herself straight. . . . The narrative digs deeper into childhood and reexamines adulthood more painfully than its predecessor, but image."

—Jill Ker Conway, author of True North

"Evocative and moving."

—Publishers Weekly

"Meena Alexander's acute poetic sensibility makes this memoir a joy to read. At the same time, the writing is grounded enough to evoke the earthier loam of violence and reality."

—Bapsi Sidhwa, author of Cracking India

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