Meena Alexander Fault Lines Analysis

In an excerpt from the autobiography Fault Lines (1993), Meena Alexander explores her fractured identity as an outsider who has known too many cultures to truly belong. She explores and represents this identity using imagery and metaphor. Alexander communicates her individuality in order to discover who she is and to relate to other people’s feelings that they don’t belong. She addresses those who have also felt that they have a broken identity, using a reflective and distressed tone to convey her thoughts. The two metaphors that Alexander uses throughout her piece emphasize her fractured identity and the potential her life had. She describes the cities she has lived in as, “fragments of broken geography,” (28), and calls the several languages she speaks, “odd shards” (34). Alexander uses these words— “fragment”, “shard”, and later …show more content…
She describes the many cultures she has been a part of as, “selves jammed into my skin,” (20). These selves are forced to inhabit the same body even though each one is different, and Alexander is not able to combine them in a way that allows her to lead a happy and peaceful life. The imagery of having something “jammed in my [your] skin” connotates pain, which is representative of the pain that having multiple selves causes Alexander. She also shares the image of mango trees growing in the concrete in New York (61). This imagery, given shortly after Alexander’s budding flower metaphor, exemplifies her struggle with having multiple selves. The exotic mango tree, representative of Alexander’s previous homes outside of America, is pictured growing in the streets of New York, Alexander’s current home. The ridiculousness of this image of a tropical tree thriving in the asphalt of a busy city illustrates how Alexander’s longing for a “perfect” life in India could never have been accomplished as long as she had a desire for