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With Fusillade Jean Arasanayagam adds to her
already acclaimed list of poetry books. Though
the setting of the volume is primarily Sri
Lanka, the tone of the poems is universal.
Through this Arasanayagam once again renders
voice to the thousands of oppressed people
around the globe. The poems transport the reader
to the island nation scarred by a long civil war
where thousands have lost their lives and the
world has not even winked an eyelid. The poems,
in the collection, also reflect the personal
sense of alienation that remains the hallmark of
most of Arasanayagam’s works. Writing from a
doubly marginalized space, Arasanayagam’s
Fusillade poses problems, raises questions,
voices protests – a gripping book which brings
to fore the anxieties that the modern world
tries to grapple with everyday in some way or
the other.
Jean Arasanayagam was born into one of Sri
Lanka’s minority communities, and married into
another. By birth she is a Dutch Burgher –
offspring of intermarriages between Dutchmen and
women of the indigenous communities – a split
inheritance. She herself married a Tamil, and
this marriage proved to be totally unacceptable
to her husband’s family. In July 1983, the
antagonism between Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority
and its Sinhalese majority culminated in bloody
riots. Her family became refugees. Arasanayagam
bore a writer’s testimony to these events.
Arasanayagam has attracted attention mainly as a
poet. Her collections include Apocalypse ’83
(1984), A Colonial Inheritance (1985), Out of
Our Prisons We Emerge (1987), Trial by Terror
(1987), Reddened Waters Flow Clear (1991) and
Shooting the Floricans (1993).
An eminent short story writer as well,
Arasanayagam’s collections are The Cry of the
Kite (1984), Fragments of a Journey (1992), All
is Burning (1995), Peacocks and Dreams (1996)
and The Dividing Line (2002). |
