Why I Write

Authors

Jean Arasanayagam

Abstract

I want to stretch the world as wide as possible to accommodate my ideas. I want to sling those words like jewels across space, to let them fall and acatter everywhere. When I look out of my window, nature is a map of greens, blues, yellows. There are innumerable mutations of colour and I let up my own landmarks on the pages of this seasonal atlas. I shift frontiers and boundaries to give me the freedom of a limitless territory but I do this without causing death and violence or displacement to other Inhabitants or living creatures of the universe. I can people that world with all the characters that I encounter from day to day, not only the real with the nuances of individual human speech but with those fictional characters sometimes much larger than life who I create. The journeys I lake are never straight journeys. They are often allegorical. I speak in parables and fables. Reality alone is insufficient.

Recommended Citation

Arasanayagam, Jean, Why I Write, Kunapipi, 16(1), 1994.
Available at:https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi/vol16/iss1/46