Meena Alexander’s Autobiography: A Postcolonial Migrant Narrative
Journal Title: International Journal of Linguistics, Literature and Translation - Year 2018, Vol 1, Issue 4
Abstract
Autobiography has been recognized as distinct literary genre, a challenging space for critical controversies about a range of ideas including authorship, selfhood, representation and the separation between fact and fiction. The representation of life accomplished by the writers enable them to construct a vivid perspective of their ‘self’ with myriad of memories. Meena Alexander’s Fault Lines: A Memoir (2003), an expanded edition of autobiography in the cross-cultural memoir series is probably one of the most authentic life stories written by a South Asian American writer at the turn of the twenty first century. When it was first published, this autobiography was chosen as one of Publishers Weekly’s “Best Books of 1993”. It traces her gradual evolution as a postcolonial writer from a privileged and protected childhood in India, her turbulent adolescence in Sudan, her academic journey to England and finally her migration to Manhattan, New York. Her memoir swings back and forth in time and space like a flashback narrative, in zigzag rhythm reflecting her multicultural life in four continents, Asia, Africa, Europe and North America. In this regard, this paper is an attempt to disclose her difficult recovery from racial, diasporic and traumatic experiences that revolutionizes the entire landscape of her writing space and of her very self, now and before. It investigates the major thematic concerns like racial consciousness, diaspora and migrant experience in the backdrop of gender and culture cognizance. It also examines the multicultural experiences of the writer that provoked her imagination and forced her to fabricate, to weave tales to chisel out a personal space amidst the agonies of her migrant life.
Authors and Affiliations
Shaju Nalkara Ouseph
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP476837
- DOI -
- Views 158
- Downloads 0
Dickens’s Characterisation of Children in Oliver Twisti: An Empty Rhetoric?
This article discusses Dickens’s characterisation of children with the aim of showing whether the rhetoric he uses for that purpose is empty or not. This is carried out through an analysis of Oliver Twist, his first epon...
The Effects Of sociolinguistics factors on learning English: A Case Study
There are some factors like educational, psychological, administrative, sociolinguistics and etc. which affect on the learning of a second language. We probed age, gender and parents’ jobs as three sociolinguistics facto...
Shift of Politeness Strategy made by The Indonesian Caregivers in Japan
This article adresses the shift of politeness strategy made by the Indonesian caregivers in Japan. This current study focuses on two things; they are the strategy of politeness chosen and the shift of politeness strategy...
Ecolexicon of Kaghati Shape in Muna Speech Community
This article describes the ecolexicon of kaghati shapes in Muna Speech Community (MSC) through ecolinguistic perspective. The kite ‘kaghati’ is one of the traditional games and a tribal cultural product in MSC. The aims...
Techniques of Teaching Professional Vocabulary with special reference to Vocabulary used in Media
English became one of the common modes to get back to the audience and common mass. Media jargons and registers are not very easy to handle and vocabulary is a key issue in media studies. This research solely emphasizes...