I am a Senior Lecturer attached to the Department of English at the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka. My research interests in diasporic women's writing, Postcolonial literature, Popular cultural productions and Digital Humanities allow me to map my own subject position and my subjects of interest into a single platform in research and publications.
This thesis critically explores the “difference” of contemporary South Asian American women’s fic... more This thesis critically explores the “difference” of contemporary South Asian American women’s fiction and their fictional narratives of women’s lives, away from the ethnic postcolonial depictions of diasporic women. The selected novels of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Amulya Malladi, Bharti Kirchner, V.V. Ganeshananthan, Nayomi Munaweera, Nausheen Pasha-Zaidi and Shaila Abdullah studied here interrogate the depiction of South Asian women characters both within diasporic American locations and in South Asian settings. These writers establish individual identities that defy homogeneity assigned to regional identities and establish heterogeneous characters that are influenced through transnational travel. This dissertation’s engagement with exotic identities, foodways, ethno-social identities and diasporic and native socio-cultural pressures for women, offers a “different” reading of contemporary South Asian women’s fiction. The identities that are being reinvented by the selected Indian...
Alien Domiciles: Diasporic Inquiries into South Asian Women’s Narratives, 2020
Sri Lankan diasporic author Shankari Chandran’s narrative gives a voice to the Othered group of S... more Sri Lankan diasporic author Shankari Chandran’s narrative gives a voice to the Othered group of Sri Lankan Tamils to explore their ethno cultural identity through her debut novel Song of the Sun God (2017). Being the Other, not only in their own country but also having had to occupy the alien space of the Other in the diaspora, the female narrators find their own means of subverting, transgressing and adopting their alien spaces to suit their own needs. This paper examines Chandran’s use of culinary references as a mode of domesticating the alienness ascribed to diasporic women and how various paradigms of female agency is rediscovered through food practices and rituals explored in the novel. The agency, adaptability and uniqueness of the female narrators will be analysed with reference to theoretical underpinnings of diasporic narratives explored in Mannur, Huggan and other critics.
Women Writers of the South Asian Diaspora: Interpreting Gender, Texts and Contexts, 2020
Nayomi Munaweera’s debut novel Island of a Thousand Mirrors (2012) examines Sri Lanka’s ethnic wa... more Nayomi Munaweera’s debut novel Island of a Thousand Mirrors (2012) examines Sri Lanka’s ethnic war that ravaged the country for three decades from the perspective of a diasporic Sinhalese woman and a young Tamil girl-turned-militant. The novel that navigates diasporic concerns of lands-left-behind and multiple socio-ethnic hierarchies within Sri Lanka’s two main ethnic groups, presents an old tale of ethnic harmony with a new perspective: women’s perspective. This paper argues that spatial (dis)locations create distinct identities for the female protagonists. The novel is also analysed as a diasporic fiction that steers through subtle power hierarchies of class, gender, socio-economic standing and ethno-religious affiliations through its narrative. I analyse Munaweera as a distinct Sri Lankan American woman writer whose uniqueness is brought to the fore through her use of ethnic, social and other culture specific terms, which establish her presence away from other contemporary South Asian American women writers. I also examine the importance of the women centred narrative in the text that highlight the significance of women’s voices, in contemporary Sri Lankan diasporic women’s writing, through this paper.
This paper endeavours to read V.V.Ganeshananthan’ s Love Marriage from a diasporic perspective fo... more This paper endeavours to read V.V.Ganeshananthan’ s Love Marriage from a diasporic perspective focusing on women characters in the narrative. As Uma Narayan argues and Lisa Lau confirms the position of the novelist as an informer of the ‘Other’s’ culture to educate the uninitiated through the use of ethnocentric details evident in the South Asian American women’s fiction will be read in Ganeshanathan’s use of detailed descriptions on the Tamil diaspora in America and Canada. The exoticised textual details in the narrative and the position of the women make them the authentic insiders to the ‘Other’. It will be contended that Ganeshananthan ventures into the American diasporic women writers’ tradition rather than the postcolonial tradition by marketing the marginality of the ethnic identities of her women characters through such cultural and social details. By emulating the established writers such as Mukherjee and Divakaruni, Love Marriage provides an insider’s view to a diasporic audience. This paper will argue that the ethnicised gaze of Ganeshananthan enables her to seek her audience and accolades from among the diasporic audiences and not from the domestic audience in Sri Lanka therefore writing to the diaspora from the diaspora.
Translocal and transnational spaces have (re) shaped diasporic immigrant identity over the years.... more Translocal and transnational spaces have (re) shaped diasporic immigrant identity over the years. The ability to not only adapt and adopt spaces, but to retain and re-live left behind spaces makes modern diasporic, immigrant identity unique in its negotiation of ethnic, national and postcolonial landscapes. Drawing on Anthony Appiah’s “Cosmopolitan Patriotism” this paper argues for a re- reading of Shyam Selvadurai’s The Hungry Ghosts (2014) as a fiction that negotiates translocal and transnational spaces, inhabited by modern postcolonial diasporic subjects. The (re) imagination of ethno- national identities that creates a cosmopolitan rootlessness in response to personal or socio-cultural crisis, will be explored through a close reading of Shivan’s rite of passage into ethno-national, and sexual maturity in the novel. This paper will draw examples from other diasporic novels, by both Sri Lankan and Indian authors, to investigate how private and/ or public crisis creates cosmopolitan patriots out of postcolonial subjects who were framed within a national discourse, to straddle translocal spaces of ethnic and socio-cultural significance.
Key Words: Translocal, Transnational, Immigrant identity, Crisis, Sri Lankan, Diaspora
This thesis critically explores the “difference” of contemporary South Asian American women’s fic... more This thesis critically explores the “difference” of contemporary South Asian American women’s fiction and their fictional narratives of women’s lives, away from the ethnic postcolonial depictions of diasporic women. The selected novels of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Amulya Malladi, Bharti Kirchner, V.V. Ganeshananthan, Nayomi Munaweera, Nausheen Pasha-Zaidi and Shaila Abdullah studied here interrogate the depiction of South Asian women characters both within diasporic American locations and in South Asian settings. These writers establish individual identities that defy homogeneity assigned to regional identities and establish heterogeneous characters that are influenced through transnational travel. This dissertation’s engagement with exotic identities, foodways, ethno-social identities and diasporic and native socio-cultural pressures for women, offers a “different” reading of contemporary South Asian women’s fiction. The identities that are being reinvented by the selected Indian...
Alien Domiciles: Diasporic Inquiries into South Asian Women’s Narratives, 2020
Sri Lankan diasporic author Shankari Chandran’s narrative gives a voice to the Othered group of S... more Sri Lankan diasporic author Shankari Chandran’s narrative gives a voice to the Othered group of Sri Lankan Tamils to explore their ethno cultural identity through her debut novel Song of the Sun God (2017). Being the Other, not only in their own country but also having had to occupy the alien space of the Other in the diaspora, the female narrators find their own means of subverting, transgressing and adopting their alien spaces to suit their own needs. This paper examines Chandran’s use of culinary references as a mode of domesticating the alienness ascribed to diasporic women and how various paradigms of female agency is rediscovered through food practices and rituals explored in the novel. The agency, adaptability and uniqueness of the female narrators will be analysed with reference to theoretical underpinnings of diasporic narratives explored in Mannur, Huggan and other critics.
Women Writers of the South Asian Diaspora: Interpreting Gender, Texts and Contexts, 2020
Nayomi Munaweera’s debut novel Island of a Thousand Mirrors (2012) examines Sri Lanka’s ethnic wa... more Nayomi Munaweera’s debut novel Island of a Thousand Mirrors (2012) examines Sri Lanka’s ethnic war that ravaged the country for three decades from the perspective of a diasporic Sinhalese woman and a young Tamil girl-turned-militant. The novel that navigates diasporic concerns of lands-left-behind and multiple socio-ethnic hierarchies within Sri Lanka’s two main ethnic groups, presents an old tale of ethnic harmony with a new perspective: women’s perspective. This paper argues that spatial (dis)locations create distinct identities for the female protagonists. The novel is also analysed as a diasporic fiction that steers through subtle power hierarchies of class, gender, socio-economic standing and ethno-religious affiliations through its narrative. I analyse Munaweera as a distinct Sri Lankan American woman writer whose uniqueness is brought to the fore through her use of ethnic, social and other culture specific terms, which establish her presence away from other contemporary South Asian American women writers. I also examine the importance of the women centred narrative in the text that highlight the significance of women’s voices, in contemporary Sri Lankan diasporic women’s writing, through this paper.
This paper endeavours to read V.V.Ganeshananthan’ s Love Marriage from a diasporic perspective fo... more This paper endeavours to read V.V.Ganeshananthan’ s Love Marriage from a diasporic perspective focusing on women characters in the narrative. As Uma Narayan argues and Lisa Lau confirms the position of the novelist as an informer of the ‘Other’s’ culture to educate the uninitiated through the use of ethnocentric details evident in the South Asian American women’s fiction will be read in Ganeshanathan’s use of detailed descriptions on the Tamil diaspora in America and Canada. The exoticised textual details in the narrative and the position of the women make them the authentic insiders to the ‘Other’. It will be contended that Ganeshananthan ventures into the American diasporic women writers’ tradition rather than the postcolonial tradition by marketing the marginality of the ethnic identities of her women characters through such cultural and social details. By emulating the established writers such as Mukherjee and Divakaruni, Love Marriage provides an insider’s view to a diasporic audience. This paper will argue that the ethnicised gaze of Ganeshananthan enables her to seek her audience and accolades from among the diasporic audiences and not from the domestic audience in Sri Lanka therefore writing to the diaspora from the diaspora.
Translocal and transnational spaces have (re) shaped diasporic immigrant identity over the years.... more Translocal and transnational spaces have (re) shaped diasporic immigrant identity over the years. The ability to not only adapt and adopt spaces, but to retain and re-live left behind spaces makes modern diasporic, immigrant identity unique in its negotiation of ethnic, national and postcolonial landscapes. Drawing on Anthony Appiah’s “Cosmopolitan Patriotism” this paper argues for a re- reading of Shyam Selvadurai’s The Hungry Ghosts (2014) as a fiction that negotiates translocal and transnational spaces, inhabited by modern postcolonial diasporic subjects. The (re) imagination of ethno- national identities that creates a cosmopolitan rootlessness in response to personal or socio-cultural crisis, will be explored through a close reading of Shivan’s rite of passage into ethno-national, and sexual maturity in the novel. This paper will draw examples from other diasporic novels, by both Sri Lankan and Indian authors, to investigate how private and/ or public crisis creates cosmopolitan patriots out of postcolonial subjects who were framed within a national discourse, to straddle translocal spaces of ethnic and socio-cultural significance.
Key Words: Translocal, Transnational, Immigrant identity, Crisis, Sri Lankan, Diaspora
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Key Words: Translocal, Transnational, Immigrant identity, Crisis, Sri Lankan, Diaspora
Key Words: Translocal, Transnational, Immigrant identity, Crisis, Sri Lankan, Diaspora