28 Facts About Meena Alexander

Meena Alexander was an Indian American poet, scholar, and writer.

Meena Alexander was born Mary Elizabeth Alexander on 17 February 1951 in Allahabad, India, to George and Mary Alexander, originally from Travancore in India.

Meena Alexander's father was a meteorologist for the Indian government and her mother was a homemaker.

Meena Alexander's paternal grandmother was in an arranged marriage by age eight to her paternal grandfather, who was a wealthy landlord.

Meena Alexander's 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.

Meena Alexander's 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.

Meena 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.

Meena Alexander 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.

Meena 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.

Meena Alexander enrolled in Khartoum University at age 13, and had some poems she wrote translated into Arabic and then published in a local newspaper.

Meena Alexander began her PhD at age 18 in England.

Meena Alexander completed her PhD in British Romantic literature in 1973 at age 22 from University of Nottingham.

Meena Alexander 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.

Meena Alexander met David Lelyveld, a historian on sabbatical from the University of Minnesota, while they were in Hyderabad, and they married in 1979.

Meena Alexander then moved with her husband to New York City.

Meena Alexander became an associate professor in 1989, and a professor in 1992.

Meena Alexander was appointed Distinguished Professor of English at Hunter College in 1999.

Meena Alexander wrote two further books with poetry and prose: The Shock of Arrival: Reflections on Postcolonial Experience published in 1996, and Poetics of Dislocation published in 2009.

Meena Alexander published two novels, Nampally Road, which was a Village Voice Literary Supplement Editor's Choice in 1991, and Manhattan Music, as well as two academic studies: The Poetic Self: Towards a Phenomenology of Romanticism, based on her dissertation, and Women in Romanticism: Mary Wollstonecraft, Dorothy Wordsworth and Mary Shelley.

Meena Alexander edited Indian Love Poems and Name Me A Word: Indian Writers Reflect on Writing.

Meena Alexander's 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.

Meena Alexander read her poetry and spoke at a variety of literary forums, including Poetry International, Struga Poetry Evenings, Poetry Africa, Calabash Festival, Harbor Front Festival, and Sahitya Akademi.

Meena Alexander served as an Elector, American Poets' Corner, at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, New York.

Meena Alexander died in New York on 21 November 2018, at the age of 67, and according to her husband, the cause was endometrial serous cancer.

Meena Alexander held the Martha Walsh Pulver Residency for a poet at Yaddo.

Meena Alexander was the recipient of the 2009 Distinguished Achievement Award from the South Asian Literary Association for contributions to American literature.

Meena Alexander was described as "undoubtedly one of the finest poets of contemporary times" in 2015 by The Statesman.

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