Dennis McGilvray in ASIAN ETHNOLOGY Vol 73, 1&2, pp 348-49, reviewing Sharika Thiranagama, In My Mother’s House: Civil War in Sri Lanka. Philadelphia PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011
The title of this book points to the author’s personal connection with the decades-long Sri Lankan ethnic conflict, which ended abruptly in 2009 after much of the manuscript had been written. Her mother was a Tamil academician and human rights activist assassinated by the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) in 1986 in Jaffna because of her outspoken condemnation of brutalities committed by the Tamil Tigers as well as by the Sri Lankan armed forces. This volume offers a scholarly analysis of the deep effects of the civil war upon a generation of displaced Sri Lankan Tamils and Tamil-speaking Muslims, but the author’s family history will be immediately recognized by many readers familiar with Sri Lanka.
