Caught In-Between: Diversifying Tamil Women’s Voices From the Sri Lankan Civil War

This is an autoethnographic invitation to make space for different standpoints of women caught in war. This multi-genre project reflects on the standpoint of the author’s family as a female-led, female-only household in the capital of Sri Lanka amid the civil war. Grounded on the concept of ethnicity without groups and feminist standpoint theory, this piece adds to the often-homogenized voices of Tamil women. Using integrated crystallization to challenge the dichotomy of art and science, this layered piece weaves together storytelling and theory-based critique to open conversations about wholesome representation. The stories reveal the multichrome nature of ethnicities that often get painted as monochromes. The analyses highlight the intersectionality of women’s position and sound the alarm for possible marginalization within the marginalized through a unidimensional expression. The author invites more voices to diversify the standpoints of women caught in the Sri Lankan civil war and contribute to a more comprehensive reality of their experiences.

Women, Civil War and Struggle for Survival: A Study of Tamil Women in Ampara District of Sri Lanka

Even though the civil war in Sri Lanka officially ended in 2009, the hardship created by war is long-lasting and will take years to reconcile. This research is about the impact of war politics on women of Tamil community in the Ampara district of Sri Lanka during the period of armed conflict. The findings of this study reveal that the girls of the Tamil community were forcefully recruited to join the Tamil militant groups. Hence, parents found the only way to rescue their children and to assure their existence was to arrange teenage marriages. Most of those marriages were not legally registered. This paved the way for the male partners to abandon their spouses, often with children. The women whose children were forcefully recruited to militant forces and whose life was lost in the battle filed were given the dignity of ‘Veera Thai’ (Heroine Mother) with an allowance as gratitude for bearing such a war hero. However, it was revealed the title itself had resulted in many types of hardships. The government also deliberately denied any public assistance to those families. The study has found that the women in the numerically weakest groups during war time, irrespective of age difference, had undergone many and varied hardship. The study further has identified that the hardship experienced by these women continued even in the post-civil war context. Therefore, the study urges that these types of hardship faced by women in the post-war context need to be handled with political sensitivity to the equity and justice for women.

Exploring hybridity and identity negotiation of young Tamil Canadian women: an autoethnographic study

This paper presents an autoethnographic analysis of hybridity and identity negotiation related to young Tamil Canadian women. Tamil women face unique challenges when it comes to maintaining cultural practices that are so heavily embedded in our upbringing. I have experienced this within my own life, in addition to observing similar challenges among women whom I have encountered within the Sri Lankan Tamil community in the City of Toronto. Young Tamil Canadian women are finding it difficult to conform to cultural expectations given their upbringing in a Western country like Canada Using an autoethnographic approach, the purpose of this paper is to examine transnational issues young Tamil Canadian women – specifically daughters, experience in their diaspora, as a result of negotiating between cultural practices and related impacts or consequences. Specifically, I employ vignette writing, a form of creative analytic practice to explore how young Tamil women are seen as carriers of culture and related implications for their agency and autonomy. Further, I examine and communicate how personal negotiations related to choosing to follow certain Tamil cultural practices and rejecting others, can result in community isolation, rejection from diasporic relations, and uncertainties about self-worth. I consider processes of identity construction and negotiation, and how this results in the creation of a third space that celebrates difference through new ways of being, encompassing cultural values from both the Canadian and Sri Lankan Tamil spectrum. My lived experiences will translate into short narratives that create a tangible example of this phenomenon and is captured by theories of hybridity, third space, acculturation and the good daughter. Key words: Diaspora, hybridity, identity, negotiation, culture, practices, gender, roles, migration, daughters

Exploring hybridity and identity negotiation of young Tamil Canadian women: an autoethnographic study

This paper presents an autoethnographic analysis of hybridity and identity negotiation related to young Tamil Canadian women. Tamil women face unique challenges when it comes to maintaining cultural practices that are so heavily embedded in our upbringing. I have experienced this within my own life, in addition to observing similar challenges among women whom I have encountered within the Sri Lankan Tamil community in the City of Toronto. Young Tamil Canadian women are finding it difficult to conform to cultural expectations given their upbringing in a Western country like Canada Using an autoethnographic approach, the purpose of this paper is to examine transnational issues young Tamil Canadian women – specifically daughters, experience in their diaspora, as a result of negotiating between cultural practices and related impacts or consequences. Specifically, I employ vignette writing, a form of creative analytic practice to explore how young Tamil women are seen as carriers of culture and related implications for their agency and autonomy. Further, I examine and communicate how personal negotiations related to choosing to follow certain Tamil cultural practices and rejecting others, can result in community isolation, rejection from diasporic relations, and uncertainties about self-worth. I consider processes of identity construction and negotiation, and how this results in the creation of a third space that celebrates difference through new ways of being, encompassing cultural values from both the Canadian and Sri Lankan Tamil spectrum. My lived experiences will translate into short narratives that create a tangible example of this phenomenon and is captured by theories of hybridity, third space, acculturation and the good daughter. Key words: Diaspora, hybridity, identity, negotiation, culture, practices, gender, roles, migration, daughters

Not your mother’s culture : second generation Tamil women negotiating trauma and identity through art

This research paper focuses on the Tamil diaspora community in Canada that developed in the aftermath of the Civil War in Sri Lanka. This paper explores the impact of trauma on children of survivors, and how daughters in particular navigate these traumas. Furthermore, this paper analyzes how young women bear the trauma differently from their male counterparts, as women tend to be seen as carriers of culture. These ideas of women as carriers of culture do not afford Tamil women agency—instead they are left without choice in certain situations. Ultimately, this paper explores if art can be used as a mechanism to release the burden women feel. It uses the interview of eight Tamil women to understand their complex narratives, and to see if they use art as a means to reclaim agency. Key words: Diaspora, Sri Lankan, Art, Second-Generation Tamil Women, Identity, Cultural Purity

Not your mother’s culture : second generation Tamil women negotiating trauma and identity through art

This research paper focuses on the Tamil diaspora community in Canada that developed in the aftermath of the Civil War in Sri Lanka. This paper explores the impact of trauma on children of survivors, and how daughters in particular navigate these traumas. Furthermore, this paper analyzes how young women bear the trauma differently from their male counterparts, as women tend to be seen as carriers of culture. These ideas of women as carriers of culture do not afford Tamil women agency—instead they are left without choice in certain situations. Ultimately, this paper explores if art can be used as a mechanism to release the burden women feel. It uses the interview of eight Tamil women to understand their complex narratives, and to see if they use art as a means to reclaim agency. Key words: Diaspora, Sri Lankan, Art, Second-Generation Tamil Women, Identity, Cultural Purity

Invisible bondage: Mobility and compulsion within Sri Lanka’s global assembly line production

Female workers who enter factory work in Sri Lanka’s Free Trade Zones (FTZs) via contractors are not forced to join or remain in contractor labor pools. This paper, however, argues that such workers nevertheless remain unfree due to cultural and emotional bonds that restrict labor mobility. By analyzing how contracted workers’ entry and mobility within work get shaped by a coalition of patriarchal agents—parents, contractors and factory management—the paper demonstrates how compulsive emotional conditions, that I term “invisible bondage,” are produced and maintained. While the degree of compulsion varies depending on the particular form of labor contracting (i.e., Tamil women from the war torn areas recruited by military personnel, or daily hired workers), I show that all labor contracting for global production represent how forms of unfreedoms are interwoven into supposedly free market relations of production. Such invisible controls, I argue, are essential for neoliberal capitalism to thrive.