Meena Alexander uses language to express the fractured and disjointed view of herself. As a product of mixed culture, alexanderfinds it difficult to identify with a distinct culture and define who she truly is: constantly asking herself "Who am I?" in a personal struggle to uncover herself. Alexander is constantly torn by the idea of looking in the mirror and trying to see herself, afraid of what she may see. The crooked and disfigured flesh of someone lost in themselves. This shows the first signs of Alexander's personal angst and confusuion as well as her lack of a definite identity. Using words sush as jagged and crooked throughout the piece helps to detail Alexander's fractured identity and disjointed personallity as well as further expanding the image of herself by giving the piece a mangled and seperated feel. She hears her own voice as a splintered cacophony of harsh and discordant sounds , once again showing her growing confusion, insecurity, and lack of identity. Alexander is broken apart emotionally; torn between different cultures and lost in the space in between herself and the world which surrounds her. She describes herself as "multiple beings locked into the same journeys of one body." But which one is she? Alexander illustrates her uncertainty of individual identity through her listing of each of the cities and countries she has called home, all of languages and dialects she has been exsposed to in her life, and all of the cultures and traditional values she has follwed, and her inability to truly identify with one. She wishes she could find herself in one of these places and its culture and be at peace with herself , but she cannot tear herself apart; she cannot escape the shadows of her past. As her confusion and self contempt seem to grow, Alexander still finds the questions persisting inside her, she asks herself: "Where did I come from? How did I become what I am? How shall I start to write myself, configure my "I" as other, imagine this life I lead, here, now, in America? What could I ever be but a mass of faults, a fault mass?" Here, Alexander uses a dictionary definition of the word fault to add further emphasis to this word, fault. In calling herself "a mass of faults, a fault mass" she is nothing more than a boken and fragmented person, with no certain identity. She elucidates that she is not bound to the places of her life, they are not her, as she is not them; having been uprooted so many times before that she can no longer connect with these places in her life. They are nothing more than memories to her. But in search of her own complete identity and personal disposition, she will run away into the shelter of these memories.
