Cumulative Trauma, Structural Racism, and Displacement in Contemporary Sri Lankan Fiction

Abstract

Stef Craps has argued that Eurocentric models of trauma tend to focus on one event (such as the Holocaust or, more recently, the 9/11 attacks) that affects individuals. Unlike those who are subjected to the event-model of trauma and therefore struggle to get back to normal life, the ‘normal’ life of people in postcolonial countries can comprise a series of endless traumatic events, full of, as Stef Craps puts it, ‘chronic suffering and structural violence’ in contrast to ‘the Western standard of normality’. This chapter considers the plight of those who, due to the long-running conflict in Sri Lanka that included war and terrorism, have been forced to become internally displaced persons within their homeland or asylum seekers elsewhere. Focusing on two recent Anglophone novels by Sri Lankan Tamil writers, The Story of a Brief Marriage by Anuk Arudpragasam and Boat People by Sharon Bala, the chapter explores the ways in which individuals attempt to deal with continuous or successive traumatic experiences and have no recourse to a way of life to which they can hope to return. As Sri Lankan Tamils living in a formerly colonized country, the characters in the two novels deal with the cumulative trauma of postcolonial peoples as well as the structural trauma of racism faced by an ethnic minority within a majority Sinhalese society.