Jean Arasanayagam Biography and Works

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)