Sangeetha Shivaji

Sangeetha Shivaji

Sangeetha Shivaji is well-traveled but doesn’t remember most of it.

Her mother and father are from Sri Lanka and are part of the Tamil ethnic minority there. That’s where Shivaji was born. But she had been conceived in Jordan, where her father was completing a post-doctoral program at university.

“My mom was pregnant but wasn’t comfortable with the medical care in Jordan, so she went back to Sri Lanka to have me,” Shivaji shares.

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Then her family immigrated to Texas, and by the time she was three years old, they had moved to Mississippi. That’s where Shivaji’s earliest memories are rooted.

“It is so funny, people think that if they know where you were born, they know a thing about you, but it’s complicated,” she says.

As a communication manager in the Office of Research at UNCG, Shivaji is used to crafting other people’s stories, but when it comes to her own life, she’s been pretty reserved. And that’s partly because of her complex background.

 

Experiencing civil war as a child

Part of the reason why Shivaji’s parents left Sri Lanka was because of a civil war that was raging in the country at the time involving a separatist movement for Tamil people. 

The summer before she went to third grade, Shivaji visited northern Sri Lanka with her mother. The political situation had been calm before their trip, but while they were there, war broke out again.

“We were stuck there for months — no gas, electricity,” Shivaji recalls. “There were shells falling from the sky. I was a kid, so I thought it was the best thing ever. When we could hear the helicopters, which sprayed bullets, we would go to the middle of the house for protection from the interior walls. I just thought it was so fun because we were all sleeping together.”

At the end of that summer, she, her mother, and her cousin found a way out of Jaffna, the city they were in, via a van, a boat, and a stretch on foot, as they crossed from separatist-controlled to government-controlled land.

“One leg of the trip was at night in a boat where we were told to stay really low,” Shivaji recalls.  “The next thing I remember there was a van; there was no door on the back; there wasn’t room for everyone – my cousin had just his feet inside and he held onto the roof.

A lot of people from the Tamil community left the country, Shivaji says.

“We were not refugees, but it was not great to be in Sri Lanka,” she continues. “A lot of people landed in London or Toronto.”

Shivaji’s family settled in Mississippi where the closest Indian restaurant was in Atlanta, five hours away.

“We would drive just to go there and then drive back,” Shivaji recalls.

 

Expanding her identity

As an ethnic minority, Shivaji has had trouble explaining her identity in neat boxes for people. She’s from Sri Lanka, but doesn’t quite consider herself Sri Lankan. She’s from Mississippi but also feels like the state “is its own country.”

“I don’t feel like I have a strong label identity that I identify with,” she says.

For years, she said she had a hard time identifying as part of the Asian community at all and would self-select herself out of the broader Asian diaspora. But, as a person from south Asia, Shivaji says that she’s excited about the rising consciousness of the area’s culture in the United States.

“Typically when people say Asian, they’re thinking about support for an east Asian community,” she says.

Right now, the term “South Asian” is her strongest identifier, she says. But really, the way she describes herself depends on the day and who’s asking. And that’s why she prefers being on the storytelling end of the interaction.

“I think that’s why I enjoy what I do,” she says. “It’s translating depending on the needs of the audience; if you’re a child of immigrants, you’re familiar with that need.”

In school, Shivaji was an English and Biology major, but she found that conducting research was not her thing.

“What I realized was that I really love to learn about other people’s research and convey it,” she says.

It’s something that she feels uniquely qualified to do.

“I love doing that sort of conversion and bridging,” she says.

When it comes to forming bridges with other Asian communities and expanding her own understanding of her identity, Shivaji says it’s a work in progress.

“I feel like it’s been a maturing process for me,” she says. “Being willing to form community, to say that I am Asian enough to have shared experiences, to have this shared connection…. It’s more about reading the intention of the person giving you the label. If they are trying to create community with you, take the label. If they are trying to put you in a box, I don’t take the label.”

Our house in Mississippi was often full of people. Between them and the Sri Lankan family network, my sister and I have found that we really can’t go anywhere in the world without there being some “uncle” or “aunty” my dad can call to check on us. 

 

“…last year my mom turned 70, I turned 40, and my sister turned 30, so we decided to get matching tattoos to commemorate our big birthdays. We wanted our crow to look as disreputable and silly as possible…”

“My parents met in college in Sri Lanka. Then my dad did his PhD in Scotland and a postdoc in Jordan, which is when I was born. His first faculty position was in Texas, and then by the time I was three, we were in Mississippi, where I – and my sister – grew up.”

Nadaraja is the dancing aspect of Shiva, the oldest god, the destroyer. Every several eons the world is supposed to end, and Nadaraja is the form of Shiva dancing in the ashes, surrounded by flames. And then the world is created anew. The more common English spelling is Nataraja, but Nadaraja is my mom’s family name, so that’s how I spell it.

“All of my oldest aunt’s sons came to Mississippi to attend college as they came of age. My sister and I got to grow up with an older brother in the house for most of our childhoods as a result, so we got to experience a bit of the much larger family lives my parents had as children.”

“We celebrated Christmas and Thanksgiving, and my mom hosted Easter egg hunts despite being Hindu because she wanted us to enjoy the things our friends were celebrating. (Hinduism is also really great at appropriating other religions.) Mom felt many of the celebrations she grew up with weren’t going to be as fun in a Mississippi town without an entire community to celebrate.”

“Mom’s exception [to no Hindu celebrations] was Pongal, a harvest celebration that takes place in mid-January. We observe that every year.  The ceremony is done outside, but January was very cold even in Mississippi, so sometimes we would compromise and do it in the garage with the door open.”

“My family in Jaffna was determined not to let fear infect the kids. I did end up with strong opinions on what makes a nice bomb shelter – my great aunt’s had a dirt floor but my grandma’s had what I remember as fancy marble, but my mom says it was just concrete. I do get annoyed when Americans talk about their willingness to commit political violence. I don’t think they really understand what living in that is like.”

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Do you have a favorite Asian meal?

Well, my real favorite food is chicken and dumplings. But I do love sakkarai pongal, which is something you eat during the harvest festival at the beginning of the year. You get up early in the morning and the whole house has to be clean. You lay out a kolam, and you do a prayer to the sun, and then you eat. To make the sakkarai pongal rice, first, you heat milk until it boils over and, depending on which direction it boils over, it tells you what kind of year it’s going to be.

What about a favorite Asian show or movie?

My favorite South Asian movie is a movie from the early 2000s called Kannathil Muthamittal. It’s in Tamil, and has the big Tamil star of the era. The story is about how he adopts a little girl from Sri Lanka who eventually tries to find her mother. It’s extremely well done and beautiful, and seeing this Sri Lankan girl who isn’t quite Sri Lankan anymore trying to understand her home country resonates with me.

  The Photo Album

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Story Collaborators
Nancy Sidelinger Herring

Nancy Sidelinger Herring

Photography

Nancy Sidelinger Herring is a professional photographer with 25 years of experience in the Piedmont Triad of North Carolina. She spent 19 years working as the Special Sections photographer with the Greensboro News & Record.

She is passionate about helping homeless pets, whether it's taking their photos to help them find homes, volunteering at shelters, or teaching pet responsibility classes.

Nancy loves spending time with her husband, Jamie, their three dogs, her family and friends, and playing with her grandson, Kenai.

Sayaka Matsuoka

Sayaka Matsuoka

Managing Editor, Triad City Beat & Freelance Journalist

Sayaka Matsuoka (she/her) is a journalist who grew up at the intersection of her Japanese heritage and the suburban south. She is the managing editor for Triad City Beat, a weekly newspaper covering the Triad in NC, and is also the Diversity Chair for the Association for Alternative Newsmedia, a national organization of more than 100 news media in North America.

Using her cultural background, she focuses on issues surrounding race and identity, immigrant food culture, activist art, and cultural exchange.

Dave, Maunaleo Ventures

Dave, Maunaleo Ventures

Media Production

Dave is a builder, fixer, and protector of digital things. He has worked for small businesses and Fortune 200 companies across multiple industries, including financial services, manufacturing, and defense.

Dave was born in the District of Columbia but considers the Districts of North Kohala and Hamakua his spirit home [once from the District, always from a District]. Dave does not do social media or answer the phone very often, so if you want to reach him, you will probably need to go analog. Brah,  dasswhyhard!

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