Portrayals of the “Common” Poor as [Un]common Wealth in the Sri Lankan Novel of Expatriation

Abstract

In her paper, “ Can the Indigent Speak? Poverty Studies, the Postcolonial and Global
Appeal of Q &A and The White Tiger,†Barbara Korte responds in the negative to her
rhetorical question, “are the non-poor disentitled to write about poverty?†before
proceeding to critique some novelistic renderings of the indigent by writers who are
obviously not impoverished (294). One could ask a similar question in relation to Sri
Lanka and frame it thus: “Are Sri Lankan expatriate writers, who are separated from
the land of their birth by time and space, entitled to write about the poor in the island,
especially domestics� To this, and the possible follow up question, “Dosome of
these depictions of the poor and their interrelations with the moneyed class challenge
the postcolonial critic?â€one could respond with an emphatic “yes.â€