The Sri Lankan Civil War, beginning in 1983 and ending in 2009, was fought between the Sri Lankan Government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE), a Tamil group that rose up in an attempt to establish their own independent state experiencing discrimination and frequent violent persecution. Ultimately, the LTTE were unsuccessful, and the Sri Lankan government has since faced numerous accusations of genocide, war crimes, and other atrocities. Against mounting evidence, the Sri Lankan government maintains they did nothing wrong.

This is the backdrop of Samodh Porawagamage’s Becoming Sam (Burnside Review, 2024) which is sweet, devastating, and always insightful. This poetry collection is split into three parts: “Malli Playing by a Mossy Stone” recounts scenes from Porawagamage’s childhood in Sri Lanka; “Peeling the Mango” grapples with his life as an immigrant in the United States; “The Monsoons” contains reflections on post-colonialism.

Porawagamage remarkably embodies the situation that inspired his book. Take, for example, the short, searing poem, “A Killing.” Porawagamage writes recalling the immediate aftermath of a theft:

 On the surface, the poem recounts what would be, to a child’s mind, a thrilling, almost adventurous memory. But taken in the political context of Porawagamage’s childhood, it is darkly suggestive, and an excellent exercise in metaphor. The police dog, rather than capturing the one responsible, kills a being that had nothing to do with the real crime. It perfectly symbolizes how government authorities we are taught to trust from a young age eventually reveal themselves as needlessly—one could even say extrajudicially—violent.

Elsewhere in the first part of the book, poems like “The Afterlife of Cut Hair” play into the casual absurdism of a child’s mind. “On the last day of middle school,” a presumably young Porawagamage watches a barber’s “delicate hands cut a girl’s hair like he is / preparing salad for dinner” (23). Porawagamage confesses, “Once I thought / the barbers sold cut hair to make / Bombay Muttai,” a Sri Lankan type of cotton candy (23). In the last lines of the poem, when his family flies to the Indian city of Chennai—the largest city in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, which is a massive cultural center for Tamils—he receives “a special / kids’ meal for free. It tasted like uprooted hair / poorly fried in a barber’s soothing gel” (23). The image of hair being turned into a dessert, and then finally eaten, reminds me of the way little kids fixate on seemingly ridiculous, almost psychedelic, ideas. But, as with “A Killing,” there are subtleties here that give the poem a profound emotional resonance. Porawagamage’s choice of the word “uprooted” suggests that maybe his family was fleeing increasing violence in Sri Lanka. The juxtaposition between the hair being “poorly fried” in “soothing gel” turns a whimsical description of mediocre tasting food into a solemn moment when a sweet treat isn’t enough to distract a child from the troubling reality they are stuck in.

My favorite poem in the collection, “Everywhere Love Songs,” comes in the “Peeling the Mango” section and is split into two parts. The first, “The Kid and the Beetle,” features a grown Porawagamage on his “way to teach love poetry” (48). Ahead of him, a little boy walks holding his mother’s hand, but then stops and points at the ground between him and Porawagamage. There’s a black beetle on the ground. Porawagamge writes:

Honestly, I just found the presence of this scene, so simple, so sweet, in a book that deals with prejudice and violence to be nothing less than life-affirming. The real coup de grâce, though, comes in the second part, “Later That Night at the Bar.” “A middle-aged ‘Jim’” pours his heart out to Porawagamage about how the woman he loves is married to another man and has given birth to his children (49). He asks, guilt ridden, if Porawagamage things “he’s an obsessed voyeur” (49). After buying him some chips, Porawagamage tells him:

We have these two men sharing a beautiful scene, only to have one of them act in a racist, ignorant way towards Porawagamage. Rather than explicating on it, Porawagamage wisely just leaves the dilemma in the air: Jim was obviously kind, at least in some capacity, and even acted generously towards Porawagamage. How does that square with his other behavior? How is Porawagamage supposed to feel? How is the reader supposed to feel? It’s the type of emotional ambiguity that gets under your skin and stays there.

The third and final section of the book sees Porawagamage excavate aspects of Sri Lanka that have stayed under his skin, to glorious results. The poem “In a Democratic Socialist Republic” is, frankly, the best piece of recent protest art I’ve encountered in quite a long time. While “the Police…ever so kind, / massage our rebellious heads / with cushioned batons” the speaker sees “in a ditch  / the goddess of law— / that good-for-nothing whore / pleading for her life” (80). The poem ends as the speaker climbs “a rusty ladder / one rung at a time / to another Democratic / Socialist planet / only visible / in the dark / at night” (81). It’s the kind of poem that contains all the living energy of an ongoing struggle, and though it may have been written with Sri Lanka specifically in mind, anyone angry at their government is sure to find it invigorating.

These are just some of the many jewels to be found in this relentlessly vivid and incisive collection of poetry. Throughout, there are intense, personal poems about survivor’s guilt, longing, and love. And in the end, it is author’s honest reflections on his own encounters with violence and colonialism that should make Becoming Sam a cherished classic. It displays the talents and fragments of the life a poet who is a master of his art without ever coming across as artificial. Poems like that are, at least for me, why I read poetry in the first place.

Becoming Sam is available from Burnside Review

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Joseph Norris graduated with a BFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College in May of 2025. He has had short stories and poems published in Gauge Magazine, Emerson Green Mag, and won the Humans of the World Summer Poetry Prize. He lives in Berkeley, California with his girlfriend, Macie, and their cat, Dory, and is learning how to play the guitar and the banjolin.

If I had to define the genre that enthralls me the most when it comes to my own reading habits, I would probably go with Female Rage Novels. I’m deeply moved by authors who explore a complex woman, whether it be by indulging in qualms about her embodiment, explorations with her body and agency, or with the power structures around her. I find novels that entertain this kind of tender, flawed, fierce female character to be significant.

My favorite book of all time is The Vegetarian by Han Kang. I find her exploration of embodiment and agency to be profound and deeply saddening at the same time. Told via triptych, Kang pushes the boundaries of fiction by engaging with elements that verge on the fantastical. This book is nothing short of brilliant and remains my favorite Kang book. Some other novels I’d personally assume under the moniker of Female Rage are Animal by Lisa Taddeo, I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman, and Big Swiss by Jean Bagin.

I would, however, hate to not mention the grip that literary fiction as a whole has on me. Kazuo Ishiguro, Ocean Vuong, Sally Rooney (duh), Ann Napolitano and R.F. Kuang are among by favorites as well. I like to organize my bookshelf by genre rather than author and have the aforementioned writers bunched together as if at dinner with one another. I’m also absolutely obsessed with Irish writers. I studied abroad at Trinity College in Dublin, and while living there I was introduced to many Irish writers such as Ian McEwan, Colm Toibin, Sean Hewitt (who taught my poetry seminar!), and Chloe Michelle Howarth. Brooklyn and On Chesil Beach explore the impact setting can have on a novel like no other novels I’ve ever read. I also want to highlight Sunburn by Chloe Michelle Howarth, my favorite queer narrative in a fiction novel. This takes me to another genre of literature I enjoy: Queer/Gender-bending novels. I’d include Julia Armfield’s Our Wives Under the Sea and Fun Home by Allison Bechdel in this beloved category.

And while we are on Julia Armfield, I have to mention short story collections, AKA the most underrated rated genre of literature (second to poetry). Salt Slow by Julia Armfield and Bliss Montage by Ling Ma are original, speculative, and depict courageous instances of nuance. If nothing else has sounded appealing from my bookshelf, take these two as a guaranteed 5 Stars of Goodreads pick. There is something for everyone in these collections.

Summer books! With college courses eroding some of my pleasure reading time—and replacing it was the finicky syllabi and reading, ranging from incredibly engaging to the lack thereof—I relish summer and the time to read (and listen) to books (I’m obsessed with audiobooks, have I mentioned that?). My summer faves are all over the place, which accurately reflects my overall reading taste. Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano, A Man Called Ove by Frederick Backman, The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa, Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors, Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy, and Educated by Tara Westover are summer reads that have inspired me to write, reflect, journal.

And yes, many of my books are stacked virtually as my bookshelf is criminally small… Anyway! I couldn’t end this post without mentioning poetry. Poetry is perhaps the only reason that reading is a part of my life now. I was introduced to reading poetry by my elementary teacher Holly, the first activity I really connected with. The first type of literature that moved me deeply. While Ada Limon was my starting point, and remains my home base, I’ve enjoyed Richard Siken, Charles Simic, Maggie Nelson, Marie Howe, Chen Chen, Mary Ruefle, Solmaz Sharif, Brenda Shaughnessy and Ocean Vuong. These are the books that I will take with me everywhere.

And to finish this post off, I’d have to mention Audible, my sacred multi-tasking activity. Walking to a coffee shop? Audible. Waiting for your laundry? Audible. Doing a puzzle? Audible. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin and Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro are some of my favorite listens from the past couple of weeks.

I enjoy reading in all its forms and genres, and am so grateful to have access to such a comprehensive selection of stories to read and learn from. I’ve just learned that the minimum number of books to count as a personal library, officially, is 1000 books—so, rightly, that is my next goal (I have a very long way to go).

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