English Publications

Frozen Tears: Political Violence, Women, Children and Problems of Trauma in Southern Sri Lanka

By ci ⋅ October 18, 2008 ⋅ ⋅ Post a comment

Based on extensive anthropological fieldwork in the Kandyan highlands and through a presentation of individuals’ personal narratives, this book (second edition, 2005) by Indika Bulankulame explores how individuals deal with and address a past filled with political violence and trauma with a focus on women and children (ISBN 955-1493-06-0).

Frozen Tears: Political Violence, Women, Children and Problems of Trauma in Southern Sri Lanka by Indika Bulankulame

 Reviews of the books:

“One of Bulankulame’s central contentions is that in the eagerness to ‘move on’, rebuild and forget, the deeply debilitating effects of the trauma experienced by this group is suppressed, over-ridden and lost. She addresses this issue squarely and offers an important service in the bigger project of bringing to light what it means in social and cultural terms to have survived violence of this order. Through the simple medium of relating and analysing stories told by those who were left behind when the unrest subsided, she describes the struggle to reconcile personal grief and suffering with the ongoing difficulties of practical social existence.”

“This monograph marks a small but important attempt to understand the longer term and deeply personal consequences of political violence in Sri Lanka and maybe, somewhere in the future, it will help to unfreeze the tears which remain unable to flow and highlight the ‘institutional amnesia’ which currently perpetuates this state of affairs.”

Dr. Robert Simpson, The Sunday Times, June 12^th 2005, Colombo