‘The Shock of Sensation’: On Reading The Waves as a Girl in India, and as a Woman in America

meena alexander was born in India, raised there and in North Africa, and educated in England. She is the author most recently of The Shock of Arrival: Reflections on Postcolonial Experience (1996), and the novel Manhattan Music (1997). Her work has been translated into several languages, including Malayalam, Italian, German, Spanish, and Swedish. She is Distinguished Professor of English at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Meena Alexander has a special interest in questions of migration and memory and is currently at work on a new volume of poems and a work of prose fiction.