Abstract:
The metaphorical act of journeying from one place to another in Jean Arasanayagam’s
collection of poetry, Searching for an Ambalama, represents her attempt to realize and accept
her multiple identities. This feature of constant mobility denoted by the act of ‘journeying’
gives rise to the feminist thought that identity is a flux and never ending process.
Arasanayagam’s issue of identity lies not in the fact that she does not belong to a particular
social group, but in the fact that she belongs to several social groups. This aspect becomes
evident in her anthology in which she reiterates her attempts to identify with places she visits.
Interestingly, Arasanayagam’s concern with multiple identities becomes her unique poetic
identity in this particular collection of poetry. Being a Burgher of Dutch origin and later married
to a Tamil, Jean Arasanayagam was exposed to a rich cultural heritage through which she
enriched her own poetic identity. The paper discusses identity in relation to theories including
place-identity theory, and feminist theory developed respectively by environmental and social
psychologists and feminist critics. Articles done on Arasanayagam’s poetry, reviews,
interviews, comments from her contemporaries, studies done on Sri Lankan English literature,
research done on feminist theory and identity theory are used as main secondary sources to
conduct the research. This study analyses how Jean Arasanayagam’s ‘journey’ into different
‘places’ functions as a metaphor to indicate the process of identity formation and her realization
and acceptance of multiple identities.
