Food as Care: Stories of Forced Displacement and Connection

Citation: Sangaramoorthy, Thurka and Elise Ferrer. 2025. “Food as Care: Stories of Forced Displacement and Connection.” Anthropology News website, February 14, 2025.

Excerpt: “When Shanthy left her coastal home in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, in 1970 for Chicago, she carried ways of caring that would reshape her family’s bonds through war and displacement. Over the next fifteen years, as violence against Tamils escalated, her eight siblings—Shakuntala, Chandran, Babu, Nala, Saddan, Kala, Amutha, and Thushy—and their parents would scatter across temporary homes in Europe, Africa, and the United States, each finding their own way to maintain connection through food. By the time they reunited in Rochester, New York, the Sri Lankan Civil War had erupted, transforming their displacement from a detour and into a permanent reality…. Food emerged as their bridge between past and present, between scattered family members, between the home they lost and the ones they were creating.”