Stories of Sri Lankan Women - Issue #6

March 09, 2022

Everystory Sri Lanka is a feminist storytelling and knowledge-sharing collective based in Sri Lanka and working across South Asia.

This is our flagship project: Stories of Sri Lankan Women. Through this work, we aim to gather as many stories as possible of inspirational Sri Lankan women born in the 20th and 21st century whose lives, work, and experience have and have been shaped by our social, political, and cultural contexts. At this stage, we intend to create a compendium of Sri Lankan women’s stories drawing out synergies across places and contexts, spotlighting on catalytic moments, and exploring where and how we can tell feminist histories.

About the Work

In October 2021, we launched the first thirty stories collected through this work to the public. The collection, development, publishing, and launching of these stories have all been made possible by the generous support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Sri Lanka and the Maldives. We are proud to present into the public domain the first thirty stories from the Stories of Sri Lankan Women project.

The women featured in this first phase are diverse, and each has her own compelling journey to share. We intentionally chose to highlight stories of women currently living and based in Sri Lanka or who have been for a greater portion of their lives. The stories span across generations, industries, experiences, race, ethnicity, religion, and historical contexts. It is by no means meant to be an exhaustive list of any kind, but rather, a glimpse of the phenomenal herstories that exist.

Through this mailing list, we will share with you the stories from the first phase of our work as they are concurrently released on our social media accounts.

You can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn (where you can find tri-lingual summaries of each of the stories as well) and our Medium page.

“It's a song [We Will Overcome] for today, for Sri Lanka, that we should overcome. It's not that we will conquer, we will kill, we will defeat, but that we should overcome.

There's an obstacle, and we will overcome it together. And at the end of it, we will be home.”

-Dr. Radhika Coomaraswamy (Former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations)

“It is the passion to conserve, and I think at its core, the most important thing is that we are ensuring a better future for our children and future generations. That’s what drives me because I think that development needs to be sustainable, to be fruitful.” 

-Zaineb Akbarally (Environmental Scientist, Conservationist & Educator)

“If I don’t keep doing my art, I’d get lost. I’d be forgotten. For people to know that a person like me exists, I need to keep on doing something. If I do a good piece of art, I don’t need the effects of yoga or meditation - where you feel that freeing of tension and peace of mind. That piece of work gives me my happiness. My art gives me this kind of peaceful, joyous mentality. ”

-Hanusha Somasunderam (Visual Artist and Sculptor)

“What I hope for this country is that we go back to a culture where society will function on the basis of accountability for the exercise of power at all levels, not through an individual but through strong institutions. In other words, to go back to the past that this country had. Because without that…that is my hope and vision, because then there, that system of governance will deliver to a people.”

-Professor Emeritus Savitri Goonesekere

Do not miss reading these stories

Please click and drag this email to the “Primary” tab in your email interface so this newsletter won't get lost among other promotions.

Feel free to share these stories and sign up for our mailing list here.

If you have any questions, suggestions, feedback or would like to support this work please email us at [email protected]

Reply

or to participate.