Biography
Jean Arasanayagam (born Jean Soloman, in Kandy 1931) is a Sri Lankan poet who primarily examines the lives of people on the margins of society. Arasanayagam herself is familiar with being on the outskirts of society; first as a Ceylon Burgher (children from the inter-marriages of Europeans with indigenous people) and then as wife of a Tamil Sri Lankan who is of a different ethnic group from her.Jean Arasanayagam: “Writing is not for the celebrity status you place such importance on, it is not for self-glorification but it entails issues that emerge out of our entire surroundings and extends universally,” Jean Arasanayagam’s body of work:
Poetry
- Kindura (1973)
- Poems of Season Beginning and a Season Over (1977)
- Apocalypse ’83 (1984)
- The Cry of the Kite (1984)
- A Colonial Inheritance and Other Poems (1985)
- Out of Our Prisons We Emerge (1987)
- Trial by Terror (1987)
- Reddened Waters Flow Clear (1991)
- Shooting the Floricans (1993)
- Nallur
- ruined gopuram
- mother-in-law
Prose
- The Cry of the Kite (A collection of short stories) (Kandy, 1984)
- The Outsider (Nagasaki University: Bulletin of the Faculty of Liberal Arts, 1989)
- Fragments of a Journey (Colombo : WERC, 1992)
- All is Burning (New Delhi : Penguin Books India, 1995)
- Peacocks and Dreams (New Delhi : Navrang, 1996)
You can read Jean Arasanayagam’s poetry here