Film Review for Paris in July - Little Jaffna

 I may have strayed a little from my ambitions list.... but I couldn't find Le Havre on my free streaming service, SBS.  I found Little Jaffna instead. 

Have you ever been to Sri Lanka? or have you heard things about the Tamil Tigers insurgency?  This occured during my lifetime, and I still dont fully comprehend it. 

This film, directed by the leading actor, is a powerful story of the challenges for displaced Sri Lankans in Paris. Little Jaffna being the suburbs in Paris where the Sri Lankans found refuge and community together. 

During the insurgency, 1983 - 2009, the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, sustained their military capabilities through extensive funding from a global Tamil diaspora network, alongside extortion and illicit trafficking. The story told in this film is about the Killi'z gang, who is portrayed as a powerful and dangerous syndicate that extorts money from local Sri Lankan Tamil businesses to finance covert operations and resistance movements. 

The film evokes the gang culture, aspects of the homeland culture, and also a hope for assimilation in the new homeland. 

I did a quick search and found there are nearly 4 million Sri Lankan Tamils globally, nearly 3 million reside in Sri Lanka now, and another 1.2 million living in the diaspora. Major populations abide in Canada, India, Australia, the UK, France and Germany. 

I travelled to Sri Lanka in 2019, and thoroughly loved the people, the food and the incredibly diverse culture and history. 

While Paris in July feels like an invitation to explore all the aspects of Paris & France we love, this film brought to light for me, that immigrants who ended up in Paris, or choose Paris for their dreams, still struggle to make their dreams come true while the past holds them connected.  However, in the end, the young Tamil/ French Police Officer, graduates with his proud Tamil grandmother in the room....  one chapter closes, as his new life begins. 

French Composer, Claude Debussy - the girl with the flaxen hair

I learned this piece as a young music student, mostly on piano, but I also played the trombone back then. I loved the piece, however found it a challenge to learn.. but every time I hear it now, I am drawn right in... 

Apparently, Debussy named the piece after an 1852 poem by French writer Leconte de Lisle. The poem tells the story of an innocent Scottish girl who sings in the fresh morning dew.  What does it call to mind  for you?  I kind of think of waterfalls in a lazy river.. 

While I'm continuing with my Paris in July reading challenge, deep into All the Light We Can Not See,  I thought I'd offer this interlude... 

My ambitions for 2026 Paris in July

 

There's something quintessentially Parisian about a spiral stairway.. It calls us to explore the space around it, and it's destination. I imagine this library space invites us to be still, and to re-create the stories of the past, or invest time in creating new ones. This July, I want to enjoy sitting in the silent space around other's stories, but also to work in creating my own new stories. 

My ambitions for this years Paris in July, include: 

Reading

1. All the Light We Can Not See - Anthony Doerr
2. The Vexations - Caitlin 

Watching 

1. Le Havre (PG), France, Germany 2010.  Director - Aki Kaurismaki
2. Hunting & Gathering (2007) - Starring Audrey Tuatou, Guillaume Cannet

Enjoying

1. Le Tour De France

This might be very ambitions, but I'm keen to try, 

Paris in July 2026 - the evolution story

 Some 15 years ago (I think it was 2010) Paris in July, a blogging event, was born out of a friendship and conversations about all things we love about Paris. Karen and I were keen to invest time into reading, celebrating and enjoying all things French for the month of July, and to share this with the blogging community.  Interestingly, I recently asked an AI tool to define the period of blogging around 2009 - and it noted that the birth of blogging was early 1990's, by 1999 - 2003, blogging tools began to improve and blogging was becoming a tool for sharing thoughts, reflections and reviews more publicly. When Karen and I were ready to go live, blogging was reaching it's 'golden era' (as defined by media scholars and historians). During the early 2000s we noticed mainstream adoption, professional blogs, niche expertise, RSS readers flourish, blogs influence politics and journalism. This was following by the social media transition, and now, blogging occurs in a variety or formats on many platforms, and is using AI to build content. 

However, Paris in July, has always been an authentic space for individuals to continue to share their love of all things Paris/France and the French culture. 

I'm super excited to see that Words and Peace continues to host the event now in 2026!  Emma has been a regular contributor for many many years, and it's a delight to see it lives on.  Everyone has phases in life that come and go, and for me, I needed to step back from blogging to manage my personal, professional and academic pursuits in recent years. But when you have a virtual community around you, and you share the vision for something, it's easy to ask for help, and easy to trust the change over. Thank you Emma. 

I was thinking about all the contributors, all the posts, and the community that Paris in July developed, and asked AI to provide some commentary for me.. Here's a few insights: 

• The annual Paris in July blogging event hosted by Thyme for Tea has become one of the longest-running themed community events in the book-blogging world. What began around 2010 has grown into a remarkably durable international community centred on a shared affection for France, Paris, and French culture.
• The event has never been about attracting hundreds of bloggers; instead it has cultivated a loyal core of returning participants, with new bloggers joining each year.
• Across the life of the event, there have probably been 80–100 distinct bloggers participating, although many returned year after year. Regular contributors include blogs such as Bellezza, Books as Food, Brona's Books, The Marmalade Gypsy, Readerbuzz, The Reading Life, A Bookish Way of Life, Mae's Food Blog, The Content Reader, and Words and Peace, among many others
• Over roughly fifteen years it has likely featured well over a thousand individual blog posts from around 80–100 different bloggers.
•  Its enduring appeal lies not in competition or volume but in its welcoming, eclectic spirit and the friendships that developed through many Julys of shared enthusiasm for France.
• In summary - AI noted -  Paris in July is a notable example of a long-lived niche blogging event. While it has never been massive in scale, it has achieved something arguably more valuable: a sustained, international community of readers, travellers, cooks and Francophiles who return each July to celebrate French culture together.

With that, I wonder what the next evolution of Paris in July will be? Will you be continuing, via the new home over at Words and Peace? Don't forget to sign in with the widget Emma provides - because, as in the past, it's being able to follow and link with our fellow francophiles that makes this month and Paris in July the event it has always been... 

I'll be involved this year as a participant. I think I have the time and energy to pop in, visit other bloggers, and contribute some original content on one of my favourite subjects - Paris! 

I'm super keen to invite any of our regular contributors to share some reflections on what it's been like to be involved in this annual event..  why dont you share your memories in a post, or just in the comments below?  As noted by AI, this is one of the longest running community blogging events...... lets support Emma, and keep it alive. 

JLC #19 - Book Review - Sisters in Yellow

 

Well, I finally made it to the end of my Japanese Literature Challenge list! I'm way late on this, but for my own sense of completion, I wanted to close out this series. Thanks to Dolce Bellezza for hosting the JLC for the 19th time! 

This book was actually on my first list, but it wasn't available in paper version when I first went looking for it, so I've read and reviewed it since the Challenge, after it became available locally.  I'm glad I waited for it although it was a difficult one to get into at the beginning. 

Mieko Kawakami isn't a new author to me. In previous JLC's,  I read her "Breasts and Eggs" (2008), which I recall being quirky but quite human. 'Sisters in Yellow' was 'outside' my experience of life, and I could describe the writing style as a bit quirky, but it was a deep and complex storyline. 

Other's in the JLC #19  reviewed this book also. Dolce Bellezza wrote a moving tribute to this book, and the main character, Hana.  

For me, reading this took me back to other stories I've read about the Korean migrant communities in Japan. Pachinko, by Min Jin Lee, provided me with a new understanding of the place of Koreans in the Japanese community. So when Hana (the main character in Sisters in Yellow), was setting the scene for herself and her mother, and the criminal elements of her community, I was reminded of the complexities of living in a country where you have no ID or no name. 

Hana's version of her life's journey is told as she see's it in the moment, however it's not until the end that another version of the story is revealed. 

This is a heart wrenching story of a young person navigating her life with friends, but very little adult intervention. She's a brave young lady, taking on the weight of the world, wanting nothing but to ensure the people around her are safe and cared for. But sometimes the adults aren't capable, or prepared, to protect young people as we might hope. 

I admire that Hana could stay strong, and her internal 'North Star' was for Good... she survived. 

Another JLC closed for now - and I'm reminded that this genre teaches me a lot - about life values, nature, relationship with beliefs and a sense of spirituality, and humanity in different contexts. 

JLT #19 - book review - Exophony

 Exophony: Voyages outside the Mother Tongue by Yoko Tawada

Translated by Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda

This was an unexpected find and addition to my #JapaneseLiteratureChallenge list, however, it's been quite engaging and entertaining, for a work of non-fiction. 

It came to be in my reading pile, when I sent my partner to the bookshop to get me a copy of Mieko Kawakami’s novel “Sisters in Yellow”. The bookshop didn't have it, so my partner and the assistant thought this would be a suitable alternative..  Not sure it was the same camp, but it was a Japanese Author. 

So I've not been reading this work 'in order because I found each chapter to be quite a different piece of work. In Part 1 - she talks about her experiences as a Japanese born but bilingual German resident, and seems to reflect on her experiences as she's been in different cities around her conference or writing lifestyle. The chapters are titles by the cities she's travelled to. Dakar, Berlin, Los Angles, Paris, Cape Town etc..... in each chapter she's reflecting on different 'relationships' people have with language. 

The most powerful quote from Part 1 for me speaks to the power that language has. The author reflects on the juxtaposition of the german words schrei (scream) and Schreiben (to write). 

To be able to choose the kind of education you want, to have the luxury of writing poems and novels, is quite rare. Most people are not given a voice at all. Instead they die with silent screams on their lips, their eyes flung wide open as they watch the destruction around them. To write is not the same thing as to scream. And yet, if writing were cut off from the act of screaming, it would no longer be literature. The act of screaming is inseperable from the act of writing. though the two words do not share an etymology, they are intimately bound together through a persons lived experiences. 

Part 2 she titles "adventures in German'..  Here I've been taken on some word game play. She mingles her Japanese and German language knowledge.  I've highlighted this little interplay: 

The literal meaning of the Japanese work sakubun (composition) - which is written with the characters for 'to make' and 'text' - is really quite blunt. The image that comes to mind when you think about 'making' something is of gathering materials, using tools, putting things together. But writing isnt at all like that. As you write something invisible flows out of the surface of your skin and language begins to move like a living creature. Your body temperature may become slightly elevates, and you many enter into a slightly euphoric state as you abandon your ego altogether. This process does not at all match the craftsmanlike feeling of the word tsukuru (to make). I wondered if there wasn't another word  that more accurately described the act of writing, something that captured its magical quality. 

It's been these reflections and Tawada's analysis of the interplay of language, words, craft, and the history of words, that has been keeping me diving into different chapters, and returning to some for more. 

One of her reflections has kept me asking my friends about their thoughts on this. Tawada believes you can hold more than one 'mother toungue'. When you speak with people who have more than one language, we often ask then which one they prefer? or we try to comprehend how their brain splits the different language elements. Do they dream in one or another? Well, Tawada is playing with the concept that they need not be 'buckets' but merged, seemlessly.. 

I am enjoyed my deviation in non-fiction Japaense literature, and I dont think this book will be put back into public circulation just yet - there's still room on my shelf for this one. 

To close out - here's an image I asked AI to create for me - that I think expressed how language and life merge - where the birds pass over us, and their shadows travel with us. 

JLC #19 - Book Review - Men without Women

 Some light bedtime reading??  Murakami “Men without women”. 

“stories of loneliness, of men struggling in a world, forced to live their lives for whatever reason without women”.  Review

 In the last short story of the book, I found what appears to be the punch line for me

 Suddenly one day you become Men without Women. That days comes to you completely out of the blue, without the faintest of warnings or hunts beforehand.

Murakami goes on to day “only Men without Women can comprehend how painful, how heartbreaking, it is to become one. You loose that wonderful west wind….

 I’ve been reading the short stories as my commitment to the Japanese Literature Challenge #19. Each one of the 6 short stories comes from the perspective of a man, in different iterations of a mans life and life stage.  I think only 2 of the stories were a little too bizarre for me to see the point, but still, Murakami does write with some magic.. and I keep on reading.  Murakami writes about men who have slept with other mens wives, or other men who have slept with the main character’s wife, and mostly I think women who die. One of the stories is of a man who lives with a disability, and the women in his life are paid carers who also sleep with him, but also bring companionship to his housebound life. In another story, a well to do cosmetic surgeon, with a womanising reputation, ends up starving himself to death over a women he accidentally fell in love with… dramatic ending!!

But I think the take-away for me, is just how men (in Murakami's writings), see women as an integral part of their life journey, playing a variety of roles…  

I ponder, on this International Women’s Day, March 8, my reflections on this book of stories… perhaps dark, moody, and narrowly focused on a particular aspect of men's relationship with women.

 

The front cover of my hard copy depicts a black background with perhaps raindrops or tears.  Seems a fitting visual reference to the sadness this book conjures..