Discussion Points 1. Pireeni Sundaraligam was born in Sri Lanka and educated in the United Kingdom and in the United States. Do as much research as you can about the contemporary political situation in Sri Lanka, concentrating on the historical and political differences between the two main ethnic groups, the majority Sinhala and the minority Tamils, who are concentrated in the north and east of the island respectively. How does the information you have found out about the civil war and the relationship between the different factions in the country inflect your reading of Sundaralingam's poem? 2. Censorship has long been a tool of various despotic governments and even in countries like Sri Lanka that are purportedly democracies. According to the organization "Reporters Without Borders,  several news websites have been blocked within the country and Sri Lanka was named the fourth worst country in the world for press freedom by the Committee to Protect Journalists. 3. There have been multiple cases of violence against journalists and attacks against media outlets that have never been properly investigated or prosecuted. How does this poem deal with the idea of censorship? Why does the poem call the censors "the most sensitive audience I could ask for ? 3. Sundaralingam has described in interviews what she calls the dance of exile, "catching sight of a stranger, on a crowded street, of wanting to approach her because she looks like she might be Sri Lankan, only to find that language can be treacherous. The simplicity of small talk ”asking someone's name, where she lived in Sri Lanka, when she left ”becomes fraught with political meaning against the backdrop of an ethnic civil war because the answers inevitably reveal ethnicity, possible political allegiances, perhaps even the history of your family and the nature of your leaving. Asking such basic questions may only serve to conjure up the ghosts of a troubled past, and when so