Raw Silk

A deeply moving collection from a poet who crosses borders

New York City poet Meena Alexander was born in Allahabad, India and divided her childhood between India and the Sudan. From her cross-cultural perspective, Alexander writes with moving intensity of post-September 11 events as she evokes violence and civil strife, love, despair, and a hard-won hope. This autobiographical cycle of poems reflects the surrealism of such a life, and is shot through with the frissons of pleasure and pain, of beauty and tension, that mark a truly global identity.

Meena Alexander, distinguished professor of English at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, is the author of several books of poetry, most recently Illiterate Heart (Northwestern, 2002), winner of a 2002 PEN Open Book Award. Her memoir Fault Lines (Feminist Press, 1993) was one of Publishers Weekly's best books of 1993, and her novel Nampally Road (Mercury House, 1991) was a 1991 Voice Literary Supplement Editor's Choice.