Twelve Cries from Home

Lingvo: English

Eldonita je 23-a de novembro 2022 de Watkins Media Limited.

ISBN:: 978-1-914420-05-4

(1 recenzo)

Since August 2020, the intimidation of witnesses and journalists has surged in Sri Lanka. Twelve Cries from Home navigates the memories and stories of twelve war survivors, mostly women and relatives of the disappeared, who wished to have their stories retold so that a permanent record might be made, and so that those outside the country might understand their experiences.

The outcome of a journey across the island in late 2018 by writer and Professor of literature Minoli Salgado, who was revisiting her ancestral home, Twelve Cries from Home is deeply-layered and localised work of travelling witness. It returns to the concept of home as a place of belonging and security, which is a lost ideal for most, and uses a Sri Lankan measure of distance – the call, or hoowa – to ask how we might attend to stories that are difficult to tell and to hear.

Exploring the …

Since August 2020, the intimidation of witnesses and journalists has surged in Sri Lanka. Twelve Cries from Home navigates the memories and stories of twelve war survivors, mostly women and relatives of the disappeared, who wished to have their stories retold so that a permanent record might be made, and so that those outside the country might understand their experiences.

The outcome of a journey across the island in late 2018 by writer and Professor of literature Minoli Salgado, who was revisiting her ancestral home, Twelve Cries from Home is deeply-layered and localised work of travelling witness. It returns to the concept of home as a place of belonging and security, which is a lost ideal for most, and uses a Sri Lankan measure of distance – the call, or hoowa – to ask how we might attend to stories that are difficult to tell and to hear.

Exploring the bitter complexity of war by presenting stories from four regions of Sri Lanka, it reveals the complex network of relationships between the agents of conflict and their victims, as well as the blurred boundary between victims and perpetrators, the role of informers and the process of ethical repair after traumatic experience.

Twelve Cries from Home offers a rare glimpse into a country subject to enforced self-censorship, allowing us to take stock of social and political developments in Sri Lanka and what has and has not been achieved in light of the transitional justice mechanisms promised to the UN.

1 eldono

Stephanie Jane recenzis Twelve Cries from Home de Minoli Salgado

Bearing witness

3 steloj

I am finding Twelve Cries From Home a difficult book to do justice to in a brief book review. It is a vitally important document in its role of bearing witness to the atrocities which took place duringSri Lanka's prolonged civil war and I was awed by the bravery and perseverance of the twelve relatives who volunteered to be interviewed by Minoli Salgado. Even after reading their translated accounts I still cannot really begin to imagine the inner strength that must be needed to keep searching and speaking out, in some cases for decades, in the face of bureaucratic inaction and against a state whose best interests are served by keeping the past shrouded in silent darkness. The statements themselves make for emotionally powerful reading and need to be both preserved and shared. My problem with Twelve Cries From Home however is that as a result of Salgado's active interventions, …

I am finding Twelve Cries From Home a difficult book to do justice to in a brief book review. It is a vitally important document in its role of bearing witness to the atrocities which took place duringSri Lanka's prolonged civil war and I was awed by the bravery and perseverance of the twelve relatives who volunteered to be interviewed by Minoli Salgado. Even after reading their translated accounts I still cannot really begin to imagine the inner strength that must be needed to keep searching and speaking out, in some cases for decades, in the face of bureaucratic inaction and against a state whose best interests are served by keeping the past shrouded in silent darkness. The statements themselves make for emotionally powerful reading and need to be both preserved and shared. My problem with Twelve Cries From Home however is that as a result of Salgado's active interventions, which are openly recounted and I could completely understand her reasons for conducting the interviews in the way that she did, I always felt as though I was being kept at a distance from the Sri Lankan speakers themselves. The anecdotes about compiling the information needed to actually write Twelve Cries From Home and Salgado's journeys around Sri Lanka were interesting in their own right, but also felt too light to me, somehow inappropriate against the intense suffering of the interviewees and, especially, their disappeared relatives.