~English Documentary Work~

For my research paper, I started by doing interviews with Janya Sundar an Indian-American student at Mountain View High School and an interview with Shanthini Suseenthiran a Sri-Lankan immigrant software engineer. I used their interviews to organize my paper into three parts the problems in India and Sri Lanka associated with how the media portrays people of darker skin as well as how they often aren’t portrayed at all, along with the market for skin-lightening products and how these products are extremely degrading and immoral. I used their testimonies and thoughts on the subject to bolster my argument and convey my message. I did the same with the idea of loving oneself and used their interviews and stories to see how the way the grew up and the people they grew up around affected the way they thought of themselves in terms of their skin color. The last part is devoted to discussing solutions and ways to improve the way darker children are raised as well as media and dismantling harmful product lines that feed into the colorist message.

The PDF below is a copy of my Documentary paper before being put into magazine formatting:

Interviewee Bios

Janya Sundar:

Janya Sundar is a 16 year old Indian American living in Mountain View. She goes to Mountain View High and enjoys spending time with her friends. She loves writing and has a large role in her school’s newspaper. Janya is the epitome of a leader and is very passionate about world issues and the isse of colorism is one of them. She had a lot to say on the matter and her perspective was extremely important in developing this piece.

Shanthini Suseenthiran:

Shanthini Suseenthiran is a mother and software engineer. She was born and raised in Jaffna, Sri Lanka and moved to Toronto Canada at the age of 17 because of the Sri Lankan civil war. She is one of the strongest women I know and has worked extremely hard to get to where she is today. Her stance on colorism while very different from Janya because she is older and lived in a different place during a different time, was also extremely crucial in the development of my piece.