Meena Alexander and American Identity

Abstract

The need to be born again, a fierce need to reinvent the self, is what drew me to America. For me that is the promise of this country, a promise, crossed with blood. (Alexander, Poetics of Dislocation 134) In the criticism, prose, poetry, and interviews from 1983–2009 that constitute Meena Alexander’s book Poetics of Dislocation (2009), the author revisits a concern that permeates her entire body of work: the struggle to define herself as a poet, scholar, woman, and Other who creates in the context of transcultural writing in English. Alexander’s work demonstrates a constantly evolving aesthetic, influenced by her travels, reading, and political activism. Discussing Alexander’s relationship to American identity, this essay examines how Poetics of Dislocation reflects her critical framework, literary dexterity, influences, and perspective on writing. It explores Alexander’s use of personal criticism/autobiography, her loyalty to New York, her politics as a self-identified female of color, her American literary influences, and the impact of her transnational background on her work, to highlight her vexed position and what I perceive as her highly subjective (and problematic) perspective on dislocation. I argue that although Alexander’s background and subject matter defy easy categorization, her possession of an American passport, along with her central themes mark her as a contemporary and pioneering Asian American writer, with all of the challenges and triumphs that this label implies.