Growing up in Australia in the ‘90s, Dr Arachchi had few peers who could relate to her sense of alienation as a cross-culture kid. Now, her story reflects the lives of many immigrants. Her memoir Brown. Female. Doctor, is an insightful exploration of the quest to belong without sacrificing the multiple identities that immigrant women are privileged to hold.
Arachchi knows that when some people first speak to her, they immediately notice what sets her apart: being brown, a woman and a mother. With her memoir, Arachchi showcases the inadequacies of these labels in capturing her full identity. Whilst the book lingers on moments of racism and sexism, Dr Arachchi widens the scope of her memoir to include moments of grief, personal struggles with motherhood and her struggle to attain work-life balance.
“The title reads in a very specific way. That’s kind of what people see when they look at us [women of colour]. Everyday, people look at us and they think, ‘where are you from?’ And as a cross-culture kid, i.e. someone growing up with two different cultures, I received this question from everyone, whether I was in Sri Lanka or in Australia. But this is just another attempt to categorise us and to put us in a box,” she says.
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Whilst she’s proud of her identity now, her early years in Australia, where she was often told to go back to where she came from, left her feeling deeply alienated.
“Representation is so important because “seeing is believing” right? When I was growing up, the only person of colour I saw and who left an impact on me was Cathy Freeman,” she explains.
For Sarah Arachchi, gaining a sense of belonging was a perpetual battle, where every stage of her life came with a sense of feeling out of place, whether it was the taunts she received on the playground or sexist patient encounters. But instead of lingering on these moments, the memoir focuses on her acts of self-reclamation – from changing her name from Chaturi to Sarah, so that she would be taken seriously, to embracing traditionally feminine qualities in her practice.
“I feel the pain of a lot of my patients, which is something you’re not supposed to do as a doctor. When parents come into the room, crying about their child, I feel like crying too,” she says.
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Despite its broad focus, her description of her experiences as a brown woman gives insight into the wider issues within the workplace regarding racism and sexism, noting especially the rarity of coming across a brown woman in a senior medical position.
“In terms of leadership and representation on panels, there’s still a lack of diversity. There was a study that was done where they looked at 5 countries, including Australia, and about one third of the people on those panels were women. I think it goes to show that there is a vertical segregation that’s present even within medicine,” she explains.
Racist and sexist comments from certain patients made the hospital environment even more challenging. With men making unwanted comments, and one even grabbing her to ask “Darling, where are you from? You remind me of a girl I once met in Ceylon.”
In what is an especially validating revelation for South Asian women, Sarah Arachchi attributes her ability to navigate the workplace to the support of her family, moving away from the coveted individualistic notion of success.
“Family is what got me through everything. So, I think one of the benefits that we often have in our culture is having a family that can be supportive, and who is willing to go above and beyond to help you,” she says.
Her highly accessible writing style creates a sense of closeness and familiarity between her and the reader despite the fact that Arachchi is speaking from her unique position as a highly successful paediatrician.
“If there’s one thing that I want people to take away from the memoir, regardless of which industry they’re in, it’s to surround yourself with people that believe in you,” she says.
Arachchi has reached a place where she no longer relies on others to validate her sense of belonging. Rather, she has claimed her space in the medical industry and in society as a whole. Nowhere does she explain this better than towards the end of her memoir.
“I am a proud Australian paediatrician with Sri Lankan blood running through my veins, a cross-culture kid, a mother, a wife, a daughter, a friend, and I will always be so.”
READ HERE: How Dr Kiran Puttappa is championing diversity in healthcare – Indian Link
