The Shock of Arrival: Reflections on Postcolonial ExperienceSouth End Press, 1996 - 223 pages In this book, acclaimed South Asian American poet and novelist Meena Alexander unleashes a fury of prose and poetry to confront the stereotypes and explore the challenges facing postcolonial immigrants in America. Commenting on the history of memory, language, shame, and exile, Alexander poignantly describes the wealth of experiences and imaginings that have shaped her life and writing. Her project: "to make space for what was crossed out in the decorum of femininity, in the high places of classical hierarchy, in the racism of a canonical knowledge, in the obliterations of a national memory ... all this is part of our task, part of the violent, fractured worlds that we must etch into beauty". |
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Page 1
... speech . But how is that speech formed , when what they see me as cuts against the grain of what I sense myself to be ? Coming to America , I have felt in my own heart what W.E.B. Dubois invoked : Another Voice 1 OVERTURE Another Voice.
... speech . But how is that speech formed , when what they see me as cuts against the grain of what I sense myself to be ? Coming to America , I have felt in my own heart what W.E.B. Dubois invoked : Another Voice 1 OVERTURE Another Voice.
Page 69
... speech— that heightened , intimate vocalization ; why not ? Surely poetry is as much speech as any other form of address . Both poems draw the hard power of naming , and of being named as Other , into the seams of the present . After ...
... speech— that heightened , intimate vocalization ; why not ? Surely poetry is as much speech as any other form of address . Both poems draw the hard power of naming , and of being named as Other , into the seams of the present . After ...
Page 142
... speech inscribed midway between terror - the tyranny of state , the wheel of worlds into which a female body is cast - and the tenderness of elegy . But it is here that desire turns , in the fluidity of this speech , illumining ruptured ...
... speech inscribed midway between terror - the tyranny of state , the wheel of worlds into which a female body is cast - and the tenderness of elegy . But it is here that desire turns , in the fluidity of this speech , illumining ruptured ...
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aesthetic America artist Ashtamudi Lake Asian Asian-American art Balamaniamma bits blood born breath British burning child cloth colonialism cried culture dance dark death decolonization Delhi dharma Draupadi dream earth edge English eyes face feminine fierce figure filled fire flesh forced Frantz Fanon Gandhi garden girl hair hands Hashmi head Hyderabad imagination India Kathakali Kerala Khartoum Lalithambika language light lines living Malayalam maternal Meena Alexander memory mother mouth Native American never painted Parasurama passion poem poet poetry political postcolonial published river rock Safdar Hashmi San Andreas Fault sari Sarojini Naidu sense sexual shock of arrival Sita skin Skin Song snow Song soul space speak speech stone street struggle tell Tethi Thankam things thought tion Tiruvella tongue torn trees turned Vasco da Gama violence voice walking wall window woman words writing young