is a collection of poems written by Jean Arasanayagam and published in 2000. The poems are an investigation into the author’s self-proclaimed hybrid identity resulting from her Dutch Burgher heritage -- her ancestry of European and Sri Lankan parentage -- and the dichotomy between her colonial inheritance and her colonized upbringing during the years of British rule (see also Arasanayagam 2006, xiv, 454). For 450 years Sri Lanka was colonized by the Portuguese, followed by the Dutch and then the English. Burghers and Tamils are both minority communities and when she and her Tamil husband were held in a refugee camp in 1983 during Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict (which endured for nearly three decades until 2009), Arasanayagam was…
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Citation: Murray, Melanie Ann. "Colonizer, colonized: poems from a post-colonial diary". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 October 2018 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=16774, accessed 21 November 2024.]
