[citation needed] While primarily recognized as a poet, Arasanayagam was also a talented painter who showcased her artwork at Commonwealth exhibitions in London and Paris, as well as at the Lionel Wendt Art Centre in Colombo.
Thiyagarajah achieved recognition by winning the Gratiaen Prize in 2016, while Parvathi has established herself as a published writer in the genres of fiction, short stories, and poetry.
In A Colonial Inheritance and Other Poems (1984), she vividly portrays the brutality inflicted upon the locals by the Dutch upon their arrival and highlights the ways in which the indigenous population was exploited.
This exploration of dual identities, cultural clashes, and the challenges of assimilation continued to be prominent in her later works, including "Reddened Water Flows Clear and Shooting the Floricans.
Critics widely acknowledge that the year 1983 had a profound impact on Arasanayagam's literary career, leading to a noticeable sense of urgency and heightened political awareness in her writing after that period.
[4] Her collection Apocalypse 83 (1984) specifically addresses the riots that took place in July 1983, serving as a strong protest against the anti-Tamil violence that unfolded in the aftermath of Sri Lanka's independence.
Living in Kandy, Sri Lanka, at the time and working as a lecturer in a teachers' college in the nearby town of Peradeniya, she and her family faced direct threats.
[6] This traumatic experience profoundly influenced her personal identity and subsequently became a recurring theme in her writing, as she explored the events of Black July and other acts of violence witnessed in the country following its independence.
[2] Reggie Siriwardene, the Sri Lankan poet and critic, described her work as being the voice of ‘our collective sense of horror and tragedy” [2] after her first-hand experience of the violence of the ethnic riots translated into her writing.
Furthermore, Alka Nigam stated that her poetry "in ‘mournful melodies’ struggles with both the inner and outer turmoil,” agreeing with Arasanayagams's own admission that "the crux of her poems is a life time's search for an identity".