The Shock of Arrival: Reflections on Postcolonial Experience

by Meena Alexander

Contents Overture Another Voice Piecmeal Shelters Piecemeal Shelters
Art of Pariahs
Language and Shame
Alphabets of Flesh
Passion
Skin Song
Whose House is This?
House of a thousand Doors
Hotel Alexandria
Sidi Syed's Architecture
Tangled Roots
Poem by the Wellside
Bobating
Her Garden
Erupting Words
Aunt Chinna
Coda from Night-Scene Translating Violence Bordering Ourselves
Her Mother's Words
Ashtamudi Lake
Translating Violence
Desert Rose
Estrangement Becomes the Mark of the Eagle
Accidental Markings
Great Brown River
The A Poem in Five Parts Making Up Memory That Other Body
'A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse...'
New World Aria
No Nation Woman
White Horseman Blues
Migrant Music
A Durable Past
Performing the Word
For Safdar Hashmi Beaten to death Just Outside Delhi
Moloyashree
Making Up Memory
Brief Chronicle by Candlelight
San Andreas Fault
The Shock of Arrival
Paper Filled with Light
Skins with Fire Indian Women Writers Fracturing the Iconic Feminine
In Search of Sarojini Naidu Coda Theater of Sense
Title Search
Well Jumped Women

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Essays, Literature, Asian American

224 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1996

About the author

Meena Alexander was an internationally acclaimed poet, scholar, and writer. Born in Allahabad, India, and raised in India and Sudan, Alexander lived and worked in New York City, where she was Distinguished Professor of English at Hunter College and at the CUNY Graduate Center in the PhD program in English. She was the author of numerous collections of poetry, literary memoirs, essays, and works of fiction and literary criticism.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[L · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Travellers

In Baghdad’s market places

in the side streets of Teheran,

in Beirut and Jerusalem

in Khartoum and Cairo,

in Colombo and New Delhi,

Jaffna, Ahmedabad and Meerut

on the highways of Haryana

in poorly lit cafes

to the blare of transistors

where children lisp

we mourn our dead