Photo courtesy of Twitter
Malathi de Alwis, friend, mentor, teacher, feminist, anthropologist, birder, foodie and the most amazing cook, passed away on January 21. As we mourn this utterly devastating, untimely loss of one of the most prolific and most important feminist scholars of our time, I wanted to add my voice to those reflections about her work and her legacy. In her own words, her work consistently tried to act as a bridge between the disciplines and traditions of anthropology and feminism. For me, as a feminist activist and researcher, Malathi’s work has been indispensable to understand Sinhala Buddhist nationalism and its construction of the good woman; the relationship between the nation and its women; the politics of mourning and motherhood as well as the limits and possibilities of political activism, feminist or not, in this country. These are only a few of the many themes that she tackled in her work but they are ones that struck a chord with me.