It’s called Black July in Sri Lanka. Riots erupted in Colombo, the capital city, killing thousands of Tamils, the ethnic minority group, the group to which I belong. Brutal chaos ensued – friends of mine who were there tell horrifying stories. They saw tires put around men’s necks, saw them lit on fire. They saw women and children dragged from their homes, pulled from cars to be raped and killed in the street.
I saw none of this, but the stories haunt my fiction. Whether I’m writing mainstream lit or fantasy or science fiction, I keep coming back to the war in Sri Lanka. I keep thinking about the life I would have had, if my parents had made different choices. If we had stayed there, and been killed in the riots. If I had gotten on that plane. If we had fled, as so many of my aunts and uncles did, and ended up as refugees in Canada or elsewhere.〔("The Big Idea: Mary Anne Mohanraj" November 21, 2013 ''Whatever: The Big Idea'' John Scalzi )〕