Generational Shift, Cultural Clash with Saraid de Silva

In Amma, three generations of women shift between Sri Lanka, New Zealand and London, each with their own volatile story and secrets. Their stories start in Singapore in 1951 when a young girl is locked in a room with the father of the boy to whom she’s betrothed. They forge a troubled path toward reconciliation and understanding decades later. Circumstance and misunderstanding force the women apart, profound love knits them together. Saraid de Silva talks about culture, writing, rage and reconciliation with Pip Adam.

Saraid de Silva is a Sri Lankan Pākeha writer and creative based in Tāmaki Makaurau. She is the co-creator and co-host of Radio New Zealand's Conversations with My Immigrant Parents, a podcast and video series in which immigrant whanau across Aotearoa have frank conversations about love, ancestry, home, food, expectation and acceptance. A multi-talented writer, she also works as a storyliner on Shortland Street, was a contributor to A Clear Dawn: New Asian Voices from Aotearoa New Zealand, and her work has featured in many New Zealand publications. Amma is her first novel.

Pip Adam is a writer, novelist and creative writing teacher. She has published five novels and won several awards including the Acorn Foundation Prize for Fiction for I'm Working on a Building (2013), the NZSA Hubert Church Best First Book Award for Fiction for the short story collection Everything We Hoped For (2010) and New Zealand’s top literary award, the Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize for The New Animals (2018). Pip says she writes to try and understand things that confuse her. She is currently based in Christchurch, where she holds the University of Canterbury Ursula Bethell Residency in Creative Writing.