Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
The reminiscences of this Indian-born poet and novelist ( Nampally Road ) are both evocative and moving, and she presents them in a circular yet completely logical fashion; often they are connected more through theme or meaning than chronology. As she examines issues of identity and a sense of displacement in both her own life and those of her children, her most perceptive moments come in an examination of life in New York, ``the great island city where the poor cry out of tunnels.'' There her son answers a doorman's question--``What are you?''--by claiming to be a Jedi knight, and her daughter's drawing of her family is confused by a preschool teacher who seems not to know the difference between Indian and Native American. Alexander revels in metaphors that align perfectly with their particular subjects; recognition of the way her marriage validates her in the eyes of her family cuts ``like a metallic piece in a too-tight brassiere,'' and ethnicity is ``a violence from within that resists . . . fracturing.'' Although Alexander has lived in many places, including the Sudan and England, and done many things, she finds common ground in her expressive language. (Apr.)
Library Journal
One of three daughters of a civil servant in India, Alexander spent a large share of her time traveling to join or rejoin relatives in Allahabad (her birthplace), Tiruvella, Kerala, Khartoum, and England. From the age of five, she began crossing cultural and geographical borders on three continents, at the same time crossing over the ``fault lines'' created by the shifting ground of loyalties and identities underneath. Never, though, does Alexander surrender her loyalty to her grandfather Ilya, who believes in social equality in principle but stays enmeshed in the rigid class system of postcolonial India, or to her mother, who nudges her to fulfill an Indian woman's traditional duties. Alexander ( Nampally Road , Mercury House, 1991, and Women in Romanticism , B&N Imports, 1989) writes about replenishing her spiritual self through her poetry; she draws continuously on the silken threads that make up who she is and how she sees the world. This is an enchanting, beautifully written memoir, and is highly recommended for academic and public libraries that wish to broaden their collections in autobiography and multicultural literature.-- Lisa Nussbaum, Euclid P.L., Ohio
