In this Book
- Train to Agra
- Book
- 2001
- Published by: Southern Illinois University Press
- Series: Crab Orchard Series in Poetry
Calling upon two cultures, Vandana Khanna’s Train to Agra meditates on the effects of displacement and expatriation on the construction of a young Indian American woman’s identity. The physical journeys undertaken by the speaker reflect her inner journey from immigrant child to Indian American woman, struggling to find her place between India and America, Krishna and Jesus, samosas and hamburgers. The speaker constantly tries to recapture visions, smells, and sounds of her childhood and her travels, but cannot do so without imagination. Her memory fails her, so through metaphor she invents her past as it should have been. Traveling through her reflections on childhood, fate, faith, death, and belonging, she comes to accept her reality as a construct of lived memories and wished-for fantasies.
Table of Contents
- Title Page
- p. 4
- Acknowledgments
- pp. ix-x
- Train to Agra
- pp. 1-2
- One
- Blackwater Fever
- pp. 6-19
- On the Edge of Delhi
- pp. 14-27
- The India of Postcards
- pp. 15-16
- Two
- Against Vallejo
- pp. 19-20
- Against Tu Fu
- pp. 23-36
- Hence, Monsoon
- pp. 24-37
- The Palm Reader
- pp. 27-40
- Twentieth-Century Sita
- pp. 28-41
- 4th Street Cemetery
- pp. 32-45
- Three
- Blue Madonna
- pp. 37-50
- Elephant God
- pp. 40-53
- The Taming
- pp. 41-54
- When My Father Didn’t Work
- pp. 48-61
- Evening Prayer
- pp. 54-55
- Back Cover
- p. 70
Additional Information
Copyright
2001