Aanjali Allegakoen Oral History Interview
At the time of this interview, Aanjali Allegakoen is a M.A. and PhD candidate in American Studies at the College of William and Mary.
Mahendran Thiruvarangan Oral History Interview
At the time of this interview, Mahendran Thiruvarangan ('Thiru') is a senior lecturer at the University of Jaffna Department of Linguistics and English, and is a scholar who focuses on postcolonial literatures, the relationships between land and literature, radical democracy, and nationalism and co-existence. He received his PhD in English in 2019 from the City University of New York.
Maya McCoy Oral History Interview
Maya McCoy (she/her) leads organizing efforts with the Ilankai Tamil Feminist collective known as Maynmai. At the time of this interview, she is also a second year medical student, having made the transition into medicine soon after spending time in Sri Lanka on a fellowship.
Meenadchi Oral History Interview
Meenadchi is an Ilankai Tamil American facilitator and practitioner of non-violent communication. Meenadchi's interview is important to this project by discussing how collective healing might be facilitated for the Tamil community, where many community members have inflicted, and simultaneously were victims of, armed violence of fellow Tamils.
Pradeepa Oral History Interview
Pradeepa is a Sri Lankan Tamil artist and multimedia creator, as well as a social activist, hailing from Minneapolis, Minnesota and based in Colombo, Sri Lanka at the time of this interview. She left Sri Lanka as a young child and grew up as an asylum seeker at constant risk of deportation in the United States.
Sumangala ('Sumi') Kailasapathy Oral History Interview
Sumangala ('Sumi') Kailasapathy is a public accountant and former City Council Member representing District 1 of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Sumi has a history of political activism that dates back to her upbringing in Jaffna.
V. V. ('Sugi') Ganeshananthan Oral History Interview
V. V. ('Sugi') Ganeshananthan is an Ilankai Tamil American fiction writer and scholar based at the University of Minnesota. Her first novel is titled Love Marriage and her second novel was forthcoming at the time of this archived interview. Sugi discusses her upbringing and experiences being in Tamil American spaces.
Oral History Interview with YaliniDream
YaliniDream is an Ilankai Tamil American performing artist, facilitator, cultural practitioner, an organizer, a somatics practitioner, and a consultant who has experiences in justice and anti-oppression work globally.
Rajan Maharjan Oral History Interview
Rajan Maharjan is a first generation immigrant from Nepal currently living in Queens, NY and working in Manhattan. The interviewee discussed growing up in Yala in Kathmandu valley, coming from a farming community, his family, struggles of early days in New York, his literary forays, and hopes for his young daughter. Also discussed: caste, ethnicity, class in Nepal and Nepali diaspora.