Usha Alexander is the author of two novels: The Legend of Virinara and Only the Eyes Are Mine. Her writing has also appeared in The Caravan, White Wall Review, Pangyrus, Scroll, Raiot, The Punch Magazine, and the The Best American Travel Stories 2007. Usha grew up in Pocatello, Idaho. After an overlong and meandering university education, with pauses in chemistry, biology, and anthropology, she joined the US Peace Corps and taught high-school science in the archipelago nation of Vanuatu. She then went to work at Apple in the San Francisco Bay Area for many years. She currently resides near Delhi, where she muddles through learning to communicate in Hindi. Having lived in four countries (including Germany), Usha has learned to carry her home within herself, yet she frequently returns to the SF Bay Area with a certain sense of homecoming. Email: usha [at] shunya.net
Website: http://www.ushaalexander.com/
by Usha Alexander [This is the eleventh in a series of essays, On Climate Truth and Fiction, in which I raise questions about environmental distress, the human experience, and storytelling. The previous part is here.] In the beginning, the god of the Biblical creation myths makes the Earth and sky. Over the next several days, he…
by Usha Alexander [This is the tenth in a series of essays, On Climate Truth and Fiction, in which I raise questions about environmental distress, the human experience, and storytelling. The previous part is here.] On February 18, 2021, NASA landed Perseverance rover on the surface of Mars. Perseverance is the latest of some twenty probes…
by Usha Alexander [This is the ninth in a series of essays, On Climate Truth and Fiction, in which I raise questions about environmental distress, the human experience, and storytelling. The previous part is here.] —Change. Resilience. Where do we start? I’ve got no idea. What happens after this? Listen! The answer is here!— These words,…
by Usha Alexander [This is the eighth in a series of essays, On Climate Truth and Fiction, in which I raise questions about environmental distress, the human experience, and storytelling. The previous part is here.] In the late fifteenth century, European seafarers began searching for what they called the “Northwest Passage,” a fabled route across the…
by Usha Alexander [This is the seventh in a series of essays, On Climate Truth and Fiction, in which I raise questions about environmental distress, the human experience, and storytelling. The previous part is here.] “Our plan B has always been grounded in our beliefs around the continued evolution of technology and engineered solutions to address…
by Usha Alexander [This is the sixth in a series of essays, On Climate Truth and Fiction, in which I raise questions about environmental distress, the human experience, and storytelling. The previous part is here.] “The American way of life is not up for negotiation.” —George HW Bush to the assembled international diplomats at the Earth…
by Usha Alexander [This is the fifth in a series of essays, On Climate Truth and Fiction, in which I raise questions about environmental distress, the human experience, and storytelling. The previous part is here.] High in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta of northern Colombia, the Kogi people peaceably live and farm. Having isolated themselves…
by Usha Alexander [This is the fourth in a series of essays, On Climate Truth and Fiction, in which I raise questions about environmental distress, the human experience, and storytelling. The previous part is here.] Tabea Bakeua lives in Kiribati, a North Pacific atoll nation. Her country is likely to be the first to disappear completely…
by Usha Alexander [This is the third in a series of essays, On Climate Truth and Fiction, in which I raise questions about environmental distress, the human experience, and storytelling. The previous part is here.] At the beginning of our story—paraphrased from an origin story remembered by a Cree elder—two figures are walking along the clouds.…
by Usha Alexander [This is the second in a series of essays, On Climate Truth and Fiction, in which I raise questions about environmental distress, the human experience, and storytelling. The first part is here.] When I was a kid, I used to wonder about the possibility that the planet could slip back into an ice…
by Usha Alexander [This is the first in a series of essays, On Climate Truth and Fiction, in which I raise questions about environmental distress, the human experience, and storytelling.] In 1997, I was living on Ambae, a tiny, tropical island in the western South Pacific. Rugged, jungle-draped, steamy, volcanic Ambae belongs to Vanuatu, an archipelago…
by Usha Alexander Why Harper Lee’s second novel, Go Set a Watchman, is more profound and important than her first Even before its publication, Go Set a Watchman had become controversial, acquiring a whiff of conspiracy, inauthenticity, and foul play. It seemed unbelievable that Harper Lee would publish again after more than half a century…
by Usha Alexander Two days in south Rajasthan with AMRIT Health Services, a not-for-profit initiative A hamlet in Bedawal village “The demand to sacrifice a goat was not something we had expected as a precondition for setting up the clinic,” Dr. Pavitra Mohan explained. A pediatrician and public health professional, he was telling me about…
By Usha Alexander In a large mausoleum on Tiananmen Square, Beijing, lies a crystal sarcophagus containing the mortal remains of Mao Zedong. Every day, masses of Chinese citizens line up on this largest of the world’s public squares to view and pay tribute to him. An immense, framed portrait of Mao gazes beatifically upon them…
By Usha Alexander “In your marriage, who is the boss?” our driver, Arman, asked in a playfully provocative tone, like he was setting up the punchline of a joke. My partner and I looked at each other, laughed, and shrugged. Arman belonged to the Minangkabau, the society recognized among anthropologists as the world’s largest and…
By Usha Alexander When I visited India the summer I turned 9, my grandmother took my siblings and me to a jeweler to select pendants to bring back to the US. My brother and sister chose the gold-tipped tiger claws, still available easily and guilt-free in India in the 1970s. But I found the tiger…