Storytelling as Survival
SJ Sindu, Ph.D., Department of English
As a young child escaping war in Sri Lanka, SJ Sindu found books to be a lifeline. They helped her hone her English after arriving in the U.S. and started her down the path toward her current career as an award-winning author. No matter the form – novels, short stories, poetry or graphic novels – Sindu, an assistant professor in the Department of English, has found readers eager to embrace her diverse cast of characters and affecting plot lines.
When did you discover your love of storytelling and writing?
When I moved to the United States at the age of seven, I didn’t know any English. I moved in May, so all through that first summer, I tried to learn English by watching TV. And then when school started in the fall and I had my first ESL classes, I spent most of my free time in the library, working slowly through the kids’ section. The way I learned English was through stories, so for me the language itself is inextricably linked to storytelling. As soon as I knew enough English, I started writing my own stories. No matter what else I was into – and I was into a lot of weird hobbies and obsessions as a kid, teenager and adult – writing was like a third rail in my life. Since I learned English, I’ve always written. I didn’t get serious about it until high school, when I started writing fan fiction. And then later in college, I started to write only original fiction, and I haven’t looked back since.
How do your Sri Lankan roots inform your writing?
My Tamil identity and roots inform my writing in several ways. I grew up in war in the north and northeast areas of Sri Lanka. My earliest memories are of air raids and fleeing our home, of refugee camps and scary checkpoints and illegal boat crossings. So in this way, I didn’t have a typical childhood. I’d even go so far as to say that the trauma of my childhood, in many ways, didn’t let me be a child. I see this same trait in other people who have been through major childhood trauma – we’re forced to become mini adults early. Those experiences certainly affect my writing. I write a lot about trauma. I’ve written on and off about the war, but before now, I haven’t felt fully comfortable or capable of writing the war accurately. Now I feel ready.
Another way that my Tamilness informs my work is my experience and perspective as an outsider. Many of my characters are outsiders, minorities, often navigating experiences of oppression and loneliness. South Asians in the U.S. diaspora occupy a fraught and shifting place in the American imagination. I strive to explore that place, and also the diversity within the South Asian Population.
Your writing has appeared in a variety of forms. Is there one genre that you feel particularly drawn to, or do you enjoy aspects of each? How do you decide on which form your narratives take?
I love being able to move between forms and genres. It keeps the work exciting for me, and each form presents its own opportunities and challenges. For example, in graphic novels, one must tell the story in a visual format. This means that conflicts need to be made external and visual. One can’t rely on interiority the way that one can in a traditional prose novel. I enjoy navigating these differences in form.
If pressed, I’d say I’m a long-form fiction writer. That means novels, graphic novels, even screenplays. But the long story is what I’m drawn to. I like deep diving into characters’ lives.
I come up with the story first and then find the form in which it’s best expressed. Some stories just seem better suited to certain forms, and so for me the story is the first thing, the form question comes after.
Are there certain themes in your writing that you keep coming back to?
Definitely. I’ve already mentioned trauma as an ongoing theme. And the outsider perspective. Loneliness, too. I’m also interested in masculinity, particularly in people assigned female at birth. And in how technology like social media introduces new pressures into our lives.
You have a new graphic novel coming out soon, "Tall Water." Can you tell us about it?
“Tall Water” is slated for publication in summer 2025. It’s about a teenage girl who travels to war-torn Sri Lanka to find her birth mother, only to get caught in the tsunami that struck the island in 2004. It’s based on my own trip back to Sri Lanka after graduating high school, and it’s asking questions about family, both blood and chosen, and our responsibilities, both individual and collective, in dealing with natural disasters, war and genocide.