You can listen to the Front on your smart speaker every morning to hear the latest episode, just say play the news from the Australian. From The Australian, I'm Claire Harvey. A special bonus episode of The Front for you today. It's the third in a special series of essays penned by a handful of extraordinary Australians. We've asked them to reflect on the defining themes of the past six decades
in honor of The Australian's sixtieth anniversary. In today's episode, Australian Tamil lawyer and author Shankri Chandren on feminism, womanhood and identity growing up between the expectations of her traditional Tamil culture and Australian suburbia. Have shared Hunkri Children's perspective on what it means to be a woman. That's today's episode.
As a teenager, I vividly remember my father showing me the door of the family surgery. There was a sign that bore his name, my mother's and their medical qualifications earned despite ethnic conflict, forced migration and the challenges of a new country.
This is Shunkri Chandren reading an excerpt from an essay she's written for The Australian.
He said, pointing to the sign there's space for you two. My mother smiled and nodded her agreement. While this is obviously a lot of pressure to place on a thirteen year old and an approach not recommended in today's parenting handbooks, I remember my heart expanding with pride. My parents thought I could do anything. In their minds, gender would not limit the fulfillment of my potential.
Born in the late seventies, Schunkri Chandren is the child of Tamil Sri Lankan immigrants who came to Australia via London and settled in Canberra. After earning a degree from the University of New South Wales, Children headed back to London and worked as a human rights lawyer for the next two decades, formulating assistance for people facing some of humanity's greatest challenges. Children now lives in Sydney with her family, her husband, three sons and one daughter. These days she
writes novels. Her third Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens, was published in twenty twenty two and won the prestigious Miles Franklin Literary Award. A year later. Song of the Sun God, published back in twenty seventeen, is being given the TV treatment in an adaptation starring Bridgeton's truthra children only hope they like me.
All you have to do this evening is remember what it is you're looking for, someone.
Charming and handsome. Of course, for all her challenges and achievements, Shunkri Chundren says, surviving year nine is up there. It's a perfect storm of hormones and gossip and popularity. To use her word, it's a shit show. But it's also the year when the realization dawned on children that she had a foot in two worlds.
My generation was the first to be raised in the refuge of Australian My family was the migrant paradox. Came to contribute to their new home, to fit in and remain unnoticed. They were also afraid that we would completely assimilate. They often clung to cultural practices, including the gendered ones that even in Sri Lanka have been changed or discarded. We existed in a cultural time capsule.
Somewhere in the middle was her fledgling definition of womanhood.
And so it became an unhappy time. It became a time where I was almost afraid to go to school and unsure of how to be myself because myself was so different from the experiences of my friends. Myself and my experience of my life was culturally insular and yet culturally rich. So we were isolated from in many ways from our white Australian friends and the evolutions that they were going through. And at the same time, whilst being culturally isolated, it was full of my own culture.
Chankrije hundred believes it's the friendships that survived that hellish year that have since helped her define her identity and define her womanhood.
And so these girls that I had such a fraught relationship with in year nine, they are also the most abiding and deepest friendships of my life and the ones that have enabled me and supported me to be my kind of woman. And so they accept me for my feminism, for my womanhood, for my motherhood, and for my professional accomplishments.
I'm going to try it to cry because I love them so much and I think it's it is incredible, and I really I wish one of the many things that I wish for my children is that they have friends like that.
The author's upbringing has made her uniquely aware of the successes and the shortcomings of mainstream feminism.
It's actually hugely validating for me writing this essay, but then having other people, particularly I think women from migrant backgrounds, read it, and I would love to engage with them in a conversation about it, because I often feel that my own experience is ignored, and more so than that, I think the experience of vulnerable women, more women that are far more vulnerable than me, is also completely ignored from that public narrative and that public debate, and we
end up relying on fascinations women to advocate and to do such heavy lifting, up expecting every woman of every subgroup to do the heavy lifting and to do the advocacy for their group, and at the same time don't necessarily give them the platforms from which to advocate, because those platforms for feminism and for women for womanhood are already occupied and dominated by a certain kind of woman, and therefore a certain kind of feminism coming up.
What star Wars got to do with feminism? The Australian has been asking the tough questions for the past six decades, and subscribers get breaking news, lively commentary and in depth analysis. First check us out at the Australian dot com dot au and we'll be back after this break. Chankri Chandrin is a serious Star Wars fan. There are four references to the iconic Space opera in the essay she's written about feminism, womanhood and identity for the Australian.
If Princess Leiah could lead a rebellion, so could I.
That's a pretty impressive average for a two thousand word essay that's not actually about Star Wars, but it does serve a purpose. Her fandom is an important part of her identity and it punctuates important points about womanhood and the ways it intersects with her Tamil culture.
My husband, who undoubtedly married me for my mind, my skill with a lightsaber, and my charming sense of humor, did not enter our marriage with Tamil expectations of Tamil women.
I did. Becoming a wife and better mother has prompted Shannkri children to reevaluate certain aspects of her culture that don't gel with her personal definition of womanhood.
Over time, I've lent to deprogram and delete some of these expectations of myself so that I do not pass them on to my daughter.
Her daughter children rights is encouraged to attend temple on any day of the month, except when a new Star Wars film is released. In many Tamil temples around the world, women are prohibited from worshiping while they're menstruating. But that's not a restriction Shunkri Children feels is necessary for a daughter who's engaged with her culture.
Women bleed and therefore we can conceive if old Hindu men want more Hindu babies, then the singularly female ability should be deified, not used to degrade us.
Chankri Chandren's daughter, born and raised in Australia but immersed in her parents' Tamil heritage, has piercings, she has a tattoo. She dresses in a way that's both on trend and self expressive. Children writes that in her day this would have triggered a nationwide auntie alarm.
Oh my god, So the auntie alarm in the Sri Lankan thumb Or community in Australia and probably everywhere in
the diaspora is absolutely incredible. It is a network of aunties around the country and around the world, who know what you're doing at any given time, and so if you break any social more, be aware that they will be on the phone or now the internet immediately to alert everyone and anyone that feels they have some parental responsibility over you, whether they do or do not, and they will intervene in your life or alert the necessary Sri Lankan thumb will Auntie the next one over to
intervene in your life and to in their minds, save you from irrevocable disaster, or just to make sure that you stay on the straight and narrow as every Sri Lankan thumble girl should.
Children doesn't begrudge the Auntie's well intentioned meddling, but she considers her daughter's modern, unconstrained expression of femininity to be a beautiful thing.
When I look at my child, I am instead relieved because I know her well enough to know that she respects her body, she is comfortable with how she looks,
and I am inspired by her self expression. It has been wondrous for me to see the confidence and with which she has embraced her own identity and her place in the world, and the curiosity with which she approaches the world and the way that she recognizes that her place has value and that she is important, and she is comfortable with her body in a way that I don't think I will ever be comfortable with my body, and she asserts that comfort and confidence and expresses herself
beautifully whilst simultaneously respecting herself.
You can read Chunkri Chandren's essay on feminism, womanhood and identity right now at the Australian dot com dot au. This episode was produced by Kristin Amiot with support from Bianca far Marcus