International Journal of Language & Linguistics

A Woman Cracked by Multiple Migrations: Search for Identity in Meena Alexander’s Fault Lines
Asst. Prof. Sezer Sabriye IKIZ

Abstract
Meena Alexander is an internationally known Indian American poet, scholar and writer. Born in Allahabad, India in 1951 to Syrian Christian Family, she accompanied her parents when she was five to Khartoum, Sudan, later attended university of Khartoum where she studied English and French Literature. Then she moved to England for her doctoral studies in Nottingham. She returned to teach in Delhi and Hyderabad where she met her husband and after marriage she moved to New York. She wrote her memoir Fault Lines in 1993. Meena Alexander traces her life from childhood in India through youth and education in Africa and England to marriage and motherhood in New York. As a result of her family’s relocations as a youth, Alexander struggles in Fault Lines to forge a sense of identity, despite a past full of moves and changes. This work revolves around theme of establishing one’s self, an identity independent one’s surroundings. In this paper, how Meena Alexander does search for her own identity and self creation in a world that strives to define, identify and label people will be analysed.

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