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Meena Alexander (Mary Elizabeth Alexander) was born on 17 February, 1951 in Allahabad, India, is an Indian poet, scholar, and writer. Discover Meena Alexander's Biography, Age, Height, Physical Stats, Dating/Affairs, Family and career updates. Learn How rich is she in this year and how she spends money? Also learn how she earned most of networth at the age of 67 years old?

Popular As Mary Elizabeth Alexander
Occupation Poet Author Scholar Essayist Professor
Age 67 years old
Zodiac Sign Aquarius
Born 17 February, 1951
Birthday 17 February
Birthplace Allahabad, India
Date of death 21 November, 2018
Died Place New York City, US
Nationality India

We recommend you to check the complete list of Famous People born on 17 February. She is a member of famous Author with the age 67 years old group.

Meena Alexander Height, Weight & Measurements

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She is currently single. She is not dating anyone. We don't have much information about She's past relationship and any previous engaged. According to our Database, She has no children.

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Children Svati Mariam

Meena Alexander Net Worth

Her net worth has been growing significantly in 2023-2024. So, how much is Meena Alexander worth at the age of 67 years old? Meena Alexander’s income source is mostly from being a successful Author. She is from India. We have estimated Meena Alexander's net worth, money, salary, income, and assets.

Net Worth in 2024 $1 Million - $5 Million
Salary in 2024 Under Review
Net Worth in 2023 Pending
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Timeline

1951

Meena Alexander (17 February 1951 – 21 November 2018) was an Indian American poet, scholar, and writer.

Born in Allahabad, India, and raised in India and Sudan, Alexander later lived and worked in New York City, where she was a Distinguished Professor of English at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center.

Meena Alexander was born Mary Elizabeth Alexander on 17 February 1951 in Allahabad, India, to George and Mary (Kuruvilla) Alexander, into a Syrian Christian family from Kerala, India.

Her father was a meteorologist for the Indian government and her mother was a homemaker.

Her paternal grandmother was in an arranged marriage by age eight to her paternal grandfather, who was a wealthy landlord.

Her maternal grandmother, Kunju, died before Alexander was born, and had both completed higher education and been the first woman to become a member of the legislative assembly in Tavancore State.

Her maternal grandfather was a theologian and social reformer who worked with Gandhi, and had been the principal of Marthoma Seminary in Kottayam; he gave Alexander a variety of books, and talked to her about serious topics such as mortality, the Buddha, and apocalypse, before he died when she was eleven years old.

Alexander lived in Allahabad and Kerala until she was five years old, when her family moved to Khartoum after her father accepted a post in the newly independent Sudan.

She continued to visit her grandparents in Kerala, was tutored at home on speaking and writing English, and finished high school in Khartoum at age 13.

Alexander recalled to Erika Duncan of World Literature Today that she began writing poetry as a child after she tried to mentally compose short stories in Malayalam but felt unable to translate them into written English; without an ability to write in Malayalam, she instead began writing her stories as poems.

She enrolled in Khartoum University at age 13, and had some poems she wrote translated into Arabic (a language she could not read) and then published in a local newspaper.

At age 15, she officially changed her name from Mary Elizabeth to Meena, the name she had been called at home.

1969

In 1969, she completed a bachelor's degree in English and French from Khartoum University.

She began her PhD at age 18 in England.

1970

In 1970, at age 19, she had what she described as "the time-honored tradition of a young intellectual ... having a nervous breakdown", where for more than a month she lost the ability to read and retreated to the country to rest.

1973

She completed her PhD in British Romantic literature in 1973 at age 22 from University of Nottingham.

1974

After completing her PhD, Alexander returned to India, and was a lecturer in the English Department at Miranda House, University of Delhi in 1974, a lecturer in English and French at Jawaharlal Nehru University in 1975, a lecturer in English at the Central Institute of English at the University of Hyderabad, from 1975 to 1977, during the National Emergency in India, and a lecturer at the University of Hyderabad from 1977 to 1979.

She published her first volumes of poetry in India through the Kolkata Writers Workshop, a publisher founded by P. Lal, a poet and professor of English at St. Xavier's College, Kolkata.

1979

She also met David Lelyveld, a historian on sabbatical from the University of Minnesota, while they were in Hyderabad, and they married in 1979.

She then moved with her husband to New York City.

1980

After moving to New York, Alexander was an assistant professor at Fordham University from 1980 until 1987, when she became an assistant professor in the English Department at Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY).

1986

In her 1986 collection House of a Thousand Doors: Poems and Prose Pieces, she republished several poems from her early works and her 1980 collection Stone Roots, as well as work previously published in journals in addition to new material.

1989

She became an associate professor in 1989, and a professor in 1992.

1990

Beginning in 1990, she also became a lecturer in writing at Columbia University.

1991

Alexander also published two novels, Nampally Road (1991), which was a Village Voice Literary Supplement Editor's Choice in 1991, and Manhattan Music (1997), as well as two academic studies: The Poetic Self: Towards a Phenomenology of Romanticism (1979), based on her dissertation, and Women in Romanticism: Mary Wollstonecraft, Dorothy Wordsworth and Mary Shelley (1989).

1992

In her 1992 essay, "Is there an Asian American Aesthetic?", she wrote of an "aesthetic of dislocation" as one aspect of the aesthetic, and "the other is that we have all come under the sign of America. [...] Here we are part of a minority, and the vision of being 'unselved' comes into our consciousness. It is from this consciousness that I create my work of art."

1993

In 1993, Alexander published her autobiographical memoir, Fault Lines, and published an expanded second edition in 2003, with new material that addressed her previously-suppressed memories of childhood sexual abuse by her maternal grandfather and her reflections on the September 11 attacks.

1996

Alexander wrote two further books with poetry and prose: The Shock of Arrival: Reflections on Postcolonial Experience published in 1996, and Poetics of Dislocation published in 2009.

1999

She was appointed Distinguished Professor of English at Hunter College in 1999.

2002

Some of her best known poetry collections include Illiterate Heart (2002).

2004

She also wrote the collection Raw Silk (2004), which includes a set of poems that relate to the September 11 attacks and the time afterwards.

2005

She also edited Indian Love Poems (2005) and Name Me A Word: Indian Writers Reflect on Writing (2018).

Some of her poetry was adapted into music, including her poems "Impossible Grace" and "Acqua Alta".

2006

While she lived in Khartoum, she had been taught to speak and write British English; in 2006, she told Ruth Maxey, "When I came to America, I found the language amazingly liberating. It was very exciting for me to hear American English, not that I can speak it well, but I think in it."

2009

In 2009, she reflected on her move to the United States in the late 1970s, stating "There was a whole issue of racism that shocked me out of my wits. I never thought of myself as a person of color. I was normally the majority where I lived."

Alexander wrote poetry, prose, and scholarly works in English.

Ranjit Hoskote said of her poetry, "Her language drew as much on English as it did on Hindi and Malayalam – I always heard, in her poems, patterns of breath that seemed to come from sources in Gangetic India, where she spent part of her childhood, and her ancestral Malabar."

Alexander spoke Malayalam fluently, but her ability to read and write in Malayalam was limited.

She also spoke French, Sudanese Arabic and Hindi.

Her work was the subject of critical analysis in the book Passage to Manhattan: Critical Essays on Meena Alexander, edited by Lopamudra Basu and Cynthia Leenerts and published in 2009.