Dark Tourist: Essays: 21st Century Essays
Autor Hasanthika Sirisenaen Limba Engleză Paperback – 9 dec 2021 – vârsta ani
Winner of the 2021 Gournay Prize
“Shimmers with honesty, vulnerability, and circumspection.” —Kirkus
“Sirisena explores how stories can become a ‘talisman against the overwhelming darkness of another’s pain’ in her emotionally charged nonfiction debut … [Her] searching spirit leaves readers with plenty to dig into.” —Publishers Weekly
Dark tourism—visiting sites of war, violence, and other traumas experienced by others—takes different forms in Hasanthika Sirisena’s stunning excavation of the unexpected places (and ways) in which personal identity and the riptides of history meet. The 1961 plane crash that left a nuclear warhead buried near her North Carolina hometown, juxtaposed with reflections on her father’s stroke. A visit to Jaffna in Sri Lanka—the country of her birth, yet where she is unmistakably a foreigner—to view sites from the recent civil war, already layered over with the narratives of the victors. A fraught memory of her time as a young art student in Chicago that is uneasily foundational to her bisexual, queer identity today. The ways that life-changing impairments following a severe eye injury have shaped her thinking about disability and self-worth.
Deftly blending reportage, cultural criticism, and memoir, Sirisena pieces together facets of her own sometimes-fractured self to find wider resonances with the human universals of love, sex, family, and art—and with language’s ability to both fail and save us. Dark Tourist becomes then about finding a home, if not in the world, at least within the limitless expanse of the page.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9780814258125
ISBN-10: 0814258123
Pagini: 184
Ilustrații: 6 b&w illustrations
Dimensiuni: 140 x 216 x 23 mm
Greutate: 0.23 kg
Editura: Ohio State University Press
Colecția Mad Creek Books
Seria 21st Century Essays
ISBN-10: 0814258123
Pagini: 184
Ilustrații: 6 b&w illustrations
Dimensiuni: 140 x 216 x 23 mm
Greutate: 0.23 kg
Editura: Ohio State University Press
Colecția Mad Creek Books
Seria 21st Century Essays
Recenzii
“Shimmers with honesty, vulnerability, and circumspection.” —Kirkus
“Sirisena explores how stories can become a ‘talisman against the overwhelming darkness of another’s pain’ in her emotionally charged nonfiction debut … [Her] searching spirit leaves readers with plenty to dig into.” —Publishers Weekly
“Intuitively arranged. …The complexity and breadth of Dark Tourist complements Sirisena’s own take on meaning-making and art. … [It] works as a collection not because of its tight cohesion but because of its moments of rupture and surprise.” —Ilana Masad, BOMB
“Hasanthika Sirisena does what I love most as a reader of nonfiction—she challenges, disrupts, and reinvents the form. This astute book knits seemingly disparate events of the personal, political, and cultural persuasion into a cohesive quilt. An insightful storyteller who examines disability, queerness, her Sinhalese roots, as well as ‘great love under duress,’ Sirisena is also a critic at heart who scrupulously dissects political upheaval.” —Anjali Enjeti, The Millions
"The essays of Dark Tourist ring with depth and unexpected associations, and Hasanthika Sirisena writes them as if her life depended on it. With an insistent and probing style, she examines art and illness, exclusion and familial bonds, violence and pride, teasing out the many ways these subjects ricochet off one another over the course of a well-observed life." —Elena Passarello, author of Animals Strike Curious Poses
"Amidst the contexts of immigration, war, illness, and the comforts to be found in art, Sirisena invites us to pay closer attention to what we see and admire. These brilliant pieces offer portraits of courage for those whose ambitions have been sobered by grief. With lyricism and wit, Sirisena’s voice resounds with piercing beauty." —Wendy S. Walters, author of Multiply/Divide: On the American Real and Surreal
“Sirisena explores how stories can become a ‘talisman against the overwhelming darkness of another’s pain’ in her emotionally charged nonfiction debut … [Her] searching spirit leaves readers with plenty to dig into.” —Publishers Weekly
“Intuitively arranged. …The complexity and breadth of Dark Tourist complements Sirisena’s own take on meaning-making and art. … [It] works as a collection not because of its tight cohesion but because of its moments of rupture and surprise.” —Ilana Masad, BOMB
“Hasanthika Sirisena does what I love most as a reader of nonfiction—she challenges, disrupts, and reinvents the form. This astute book knits seemingly disparate events of the personal, political, and cultural persuasion into a cohesive quilt. An insightful storyteller who examines disability, queerness, her Sinhalese roots, as well as ‘great love under duress,’ Sirisena is also a critic at heart who scrupulously dissects political upheaval.” —Anjali Enjeti, The Millions
"The essays of Dark Tourist ring with depth and unexpected associations, and Hasanthika Sirisena writes them as if her life depended on it. With an insistent and probing style, she examines art and illness, exclusion and familial bonds, violence and pride, teasing out the many ways these subjects ricochet off one another over the course of a well-observed life." —Elena Passarello, author of Animals Strike Curious Poses
"Amidst the contexts of immigration, war, illness, and the comforts to be found in art, Sirisena invites us to pay closer attention to what we see and admire. These brilliant pieces offer portraits of courage for those whose ambitions have been sobered by grief. With lyricism and wit, Sirisena’s voice resounds with piercing beauty." —Wendy S. Walters, author of Multiply/Divide: On the American Real and Surreal
Notă biografică
Hasanthika Sirisena (she/they) is a writer and cartoonist and a faculty member at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is the author of the short story collection The Other One.
Extras
From "Confessions of a Dark Tourist"
One evening, colleagues of my cousin drove us to a remote beach in Jaffna for a picnic dinner in the moonlight. Our escorts were all Tamil and had lived in Jaffna for the entirety of the war. The beach was pristine, left largely untouched by humans. There aren't many pristine beaches left in Sri Lanka, but the civil war retarded economic development in Jaffna, especially along the beachfront, and as a result the local flora and fauna had been allowed to thrive. There were also a large number of wild dogs that prowled the perimeter of our picnic site. If we noticed their courage building and if they begin to act boldly, we threw pebbles at them to make sure they knew to keep away.
During our war tour, the Jaffna sun had shimmered above us, exuding a relentless heat, but by sunset the air had grown cooler. The sand, though, was still warm. I spread out my beach towel and buried my toes to enjoy the sensation of heat. The spray from the ocean coated us so that our skin, our hair, our clothes gleamed.
Our hosts set up, in a cabana, a camping stove. I picked up my beach towel and sat in the shelter with a friend and a group of Tamils-two men and a young woman with a child-that had accompanied the host. They spoke to each other in Tamil and one of the men spoke to my friend in Sinhala. As we started to eat, I raved to my friend in English about the food. I noticed the woman with the child smiling and realized she spoke English. I smiled at her and asked her a question directly. She laughed and in near-perfect English answered our questions and told us a bit more about herself. She had worked as an English teacher before she married.
The crab curry was so spicy my fingers, tongue, my sinuses burned, and my eyes watered. But I couldn't stop eating. Towards the end of our meal, as my friend and I shoveled bits of crabmeat into our mouths a young man seated across from us explained that just across the road, a few hundred yards from where we were seated, existed a mass grave. The LTTE had massacred perceived traitors there. I nodded solemnly at his story. I'd heard by then a lot of stories like his. The woman across from us shifted the baby in her arms, and adjusted the cloth the child was wrapped in. I wanted to talk to the woman more, and I tried to catch her eye. But she fussed over her baby and never looked in my direction again.
The beach had become completely, spookily dark. There was no illumination other than a few flashlights and the pinhole moon hovering above the horizon. My cousin and some of my friends decided to take a sea bath. I remained on the shore. Beside me, one of the hosts turned off his flashlight and nudged me. He whispered, "Look." In the seconds that I had turned away, the sea had transformed. The surface sizzled, thousands of brilliant, tiny sparks, like the sputtering of firecrackers. "Fish," my host exclaimed. Trillions of tiny bioluminescent fish. It came to me in that moment, staring at all that untouched beauty, an understanding that had until then eluded me. The war wasn't only a collection of horrors, a catalogue of crimes. The war with its continual churning destruction, its impeding of progress, had frozen us all in time, and that's what I had added to by joining this war tour, a sense that none of us would ever move on from this time and place.
One evening, colleagues of my cousin drove us to a remote beach in Jaffna for a picnic dinner in the moonlight. Our escorts were all Tamil and had lived in Jaffna for the entirety of the war. The beach was pristine, left largely untouched by humans. There aren't many pristine beaches left in Sri Lanka, but the civil war retarded economic development in Jaffna, especially along the beachfront, and as a result the local flora and fauna had been allowed to thrive. There were also a large number of wild dogs that prowled the perimeter of our picnic site. If we noticed their courage building and if they begin to act boldly, we threw pebbles at them to make sure they knew to keep away.
During our war tour, the Jaffna sun had shimmered above us, exuding a relentless heat, but by sunset the air had grown cooler. The sand, though, was still warm. I spread out my beach towel and buried my toes to enjoy the sensation of heat. The spray from the ocean coated us so that our skin, our hair, our clothes gleamed.
Our hosts set up, in a cabana, a camping stove. I picked up my beach towel and sat in the shelter with a friend and a group of Tamils-two men and a young woman with a child-that had accompanied the host. They spoke to each other in Tamil and one of the men spoke to my friend in Sinhala. As we started to eat, I raved to my friend in English about the food. I noticed the woman with the child smiling and realized she spoke English. I smiled at her and asked her a question directly. She laughed and in near-perfect English answered our questions and told us a bit more about herself. She had worked as an English teacher before she married.
The crab curry was so spicy my fingers, tongue, my sinuses burned, and my eyes watered. But I couldn't stop eating. Towards the end of our meal, as my friend and I shoveled bits of crabmeat into our mouths a young man seated across from us explained that just across the road, a few hundred yards from where we were seated, existed a mass grave. The LTTE had massacred perceived traitors there. I nodded solemnly at his story. I'd heard by then a lot of stories like his. The woman across from us shifted the baby in her arms, and adjusted the cloth the child was wrapped in. I wanted to talk to the woman more, and I tried to catch her eye. But she fussed over her baby and never looked in my direction again.
The beach had become completely, spookily dark. There was no illumination other than a few flashlights and the pinhole moon hovering above the horizon. My cousin and some of my friends decided to take a sea bath. I remained on the shore. Beside me, one of the hosts turned off his flashlight and nudged me. He whispered, "Look." In the seconds that I had turned away, the sea had transformed. The surface sizzled, thousands of brilliant, tiny sparks, like the sputtering of firecrackers. "Fish," my host exclaimed. Trillions of tiny bioluminescent fish. It came to me in that moment, staring at all that untouched beauty, an understanding that had until then eluded me. The war wasn't only a collection of horrors, a catalogue of crimes. The war with its continual churning destruction, its impeding of progress, had frozen us all in time, and that's what I had added to by joining this war tour, a sense that none of us would ever move on from this time and place.
Cuprins
Acknowledgments
Part I Loss . . .
Broken Arrow
Lady
In the Presence of God I Make This Vow
Pretty Girl Murdered
Confessions of a Dark Tourist
Abecedarian for the Abeyance of Loss
Amblyopia: A Medical History
Part II . . . and Recovery
Soft Target
The Answer Key
Six Drawing Lessons
Punctum, Studium, and The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life”
Notes
Part I Loss . . .
Broken Arrow
Lady
In the Presence of God I Make This Vow
Pretty Girl Murdered
Confessions of a Dark Tourist
Abecedarian for the Abeyance of Loss
Amblyopia: A Medical History
Part II . . . and Recovery
Soft Target
The Answer Key
Six Drawing Lessons
Punctum, Studium, and The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life”
Notes
Descriere
Weaves reportage, cultural criticism, and memoir to excavate sites of personal, cultural, and political trauma and find wider truths about sexuality, art, language, and identity.