My Sri Lankan family

Abstract

My Sri Lankan family Vidyan Ravinthiran (bio) extends its electronic tentacles across the ocean.From the outskirts of Sydney, my cousinSkypes my uncle in Colombo every day.My parents live in Leeds, just two hours away,but here they are, trying to fix the mic.She tells you at length about her divorced friendwho's lonely and whose dog began to bite:"Its name was Willow, it was a long willow-type dog."Crisply, he explains: "It's a greyhound."They're keen to know our plans. Someone has wed"another Tamil, and of the same caste. Just like backat home—it's so primitive—on our small island:is the girl even happy?" And my mother: "you do not know that,they are very very asians. She is on my Facebook." [End Page 671] Vidyan Ravinthiran Vidyan Ravinthiran is Associate Professor at Harvard University and the author of Elizabeth Bishop's Prosaic (2015), winner of the University English Prize and the Warren-Brooks Award for Outstanding Literary Criticism. He has written two books of verse. The Million-Petalled Flower of Being Here (2019) won a Northern Writers Award and a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and was shortlisted for both the Forward and the T. S. Eliot Prize. Copyright © 2020 New Literary History