The article draws on a dubious cultural practice by a group of Sri
Lankan migrant/diasporic writers in naming local characters using
unrealistic and unlikely names. Through representational examples
drawn from the fiction of Su Dharmapala (Saree), Romesh
Gunasekera (Reef, Heaven’s Edge and Suncatcher), Michael
Ondaatje (Anil’s Ghost), and Roma Tearne (Mosquito) the article
establishes this malpractice to be a failure in cultural
representation within the migrant/diasporic tradition. In
responding to such authorship the article calls for a rigorous
discussion that extends beyond the “exoticism debate”: a
conversation that, among others, has been developed by Graham
Huggan, Elleke Boehmer, Benita Parry. In the course, the paper
examines the position of migrant/diasporic writers within the
global capitalist market of transnational publication and the place
of the global and local (Sri Lankan) academy to collaboratively
develop a critique that challenges dubious cultural representation.
The discussion concludes that cultural representation comes with a
responsibility and that conscious mis-directions need to be
academically critiqued; and that the global and local knowledge
centres need to think anew in working towards such an end.