We are Present

We are Present: Women’s histories of conflict, courage, and survival is a collection of women’s lived experiences of conflict in Sri Lanka. It is interspersed with essays by women writers that provide an insight into the historical threads that tie women’s experiences of war to the contemporary challenges that women face in post-war Sri Lanka. This book is therefore meant to be an intergenerational transference of memory between those women that have lived through violent conflict and those who were too young to remember the true, human cost of war, as experienced by ordinary citizens.

The narratives shared here, unequivocally acknowledge that women’s histories matter, need to be acknowledged and must occupy
the nexus of history, justice and peace if the next generation is to create a future better than our past.