The Migrant’s Dilemma in Meena Alexander’s The Shock of Arrival | ||
| International Journal of Childhood and Women’s Studies | ||
| Article 2, Volume 2, Issue 3, July 2022, Pages 26-42 PDF (435.81 K) | ||
| Document Type: Original Article | ||
| DOI: 10.21608/ijcws.2021.67424.1004 | ||
| Author | ||
| Radwa R. Mahmoud* | ||
| English Language and Literature Department, Faculty of Women for Arts, Science & Education, Ain Shams University | ||
| Abstract | ||
| Meena Alexander is a prominent South Asian American writer who has explored the condition of migration and dislocation, fusing poetry, prose and critical thinking. As part of the migrant experience, Alexander is preoccupied with ideas of home, violence, displacement, memory, and loss. This paper seeks to investigate the dilemma that migrants face in the United States as presented in Alexander’s hybrid text The Shock of Arrival: Reflections on Postcolonial Experience (1996). The paper intends to answer the following questions: What does “home” signify to an immigrant writer in a new land? Is home a geographical place or an emotional space? Does home refer solely to the reservoir of homeland memories? Does it mean the newly adopted place from which she writes; or does it mean that “imaginary homeland” where she retreats from alienation in her new home?; and finally, how does she portray the xenophobic attitudes towards migrants in the United States? What is the effect of the English language on migrants? Selected poems from Alexander's book will be read within the framework of diaspora and migration studies with special emphasis on the writings of Susan Stanford Friedman, which offer useful perspectives for studying Meena Alexander’s poetry. | ||
| Keywords | ||
| Migration; Home; Meena Alexander; Xenophobia; Ethnic Identity | ||
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