I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you to the author, Olivia Sergent & The Ohio State University Press for this free copy.
- Title: Dark Essays: Tourist
- Author: Hasanthika Sirisena
- Publisher: Mad Creek/Ohio State University Press
- Pub. date: 10 December 2021
- Series: 21st Century Essays
- Page count: 184
- Source: Ohio State University Press
- Genre: non-fiction, essays
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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.
Content warnings: alcohol consumption, genocide (mentioned), mass death (mentioned), racism, sexual abuse (implied)
When I was approached to review this essay collection I was thrilled. I was already eyeing this book since it is by a Sri Lankan author and the title with its implications intrigued me. I was curious to see what a Sri Lankan author who grew up abroad would have to say about a visit to Jaffna following a civil war, about sexuality and love, and her own story.
Hasanthika Sirisena is a Sri Lankan who grew up in England as well as in the USA. She identifies as bisexual and has lived with life-changing impairments following a severe eye injury. Her essays focused on a blend of cultural criticism about Sri Lanka, her life abroad as well as on the topic of dark tourism as well as her own views and experience with sexuality, disability, family and love.
With eleven essays divided into two parts, titled ‘loss‘ and ‘…and recovery‘, the collection begins with essays that reflect more on her life and experiences and the latter half is more reflective with essays that focus on art, sexuality and so forth.
This essay collection encompasses a wide range of topics, so I think it is safe to say that any reader will find something in here that will appeal to you. Personally, I was enthralled by the author’s beautiful pieces on dark tourism, disability and the cultural biases towards feminine beauty.
In her essays ‘Lady’ and ‘Amblyopia: A Medical History’, I was enthralled by both the author’s experience with her own severe eye injury as well her thoughts on what she witnessed her mother going through. While I sympathised with the author’s experience, I was intrigued by her discussions on the implications of naming diseases and John Milton’s blindness.
The author’s opinions on Sri Lankan culture and history were quite relatable in her pieces ‘Pretty Girl Murdered’ and ‘Confessions of a Dark Tourist’. I was thrilled to see the author discuss the cultural bias towards ‘pretty girls’ in Sri Lankan newspapers, which then evolved into a piece on the symbol of women in Sri Lankan history. This piece prompted me to embark on my own research on pre-colonial Sri Lankan women and the fascinating history behind marriage.
‘Confessions of a Dark Tourist’ hit me on a more personal note since I myself went on the same tour of Jaffna just a few months or years after the civil war ended. I was glad to read of a kindred voice in how the author was disturbed by the notion of dark tourism as well as her own thoughts while on tour.
Despite the fact that I did not really relate to or get interested in all the author’s essays, I was impressed by the author’s skill with words and emotions. The raw and gritty quality of the writing kept me interested throughout her pieces on art (though I have almost zero experience in art) and her more reflective pieces that threatened to overwhelm me.
With the author’s raw writing and the wide range of topics these essays mull over, Dark Tourist: Essays by Hasanthika Sirisena is a beautiful collection that is not afraid to talk about the author’s most personal opinions. I was especially fascinated by the author’s pieces on Sri Lanka, ranging from dark tourism to the role of females in history, as well as by her experiences with disability. An essay collection that is full of vulnerability, I would recommend this to anyone who wants to read deeply personal cultural commentaries as well as intriguing anecdotes and historical events that I would have never come across otherwise!
More Dark Tourist: Essays content: Scroll.in’s article on the author, Leland’s Q&A with the author and one of the author’s essays available online
My essays have appeared in the Michigan Quarterly Review, Copper Nickel, Kenyon Review Online, WSQ, and anthologized in This is the Place (Seal Press, 2017). My fiction has been anthologized recently in Every Day People: The Color of Life (Atria Books, 2018), and named a notable story by Best American Short Stories in 2011 and 2012. I have received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and am a Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award recipient. I am currently an associate fiction editor at West Branch literary magazine and visiting fiction faculty at the MFA Program in Writing at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. I am currently an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Susquehanna University, an associate fiction editor at West Branch, and visiting faculty at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. My short story collection The Other One was the winner of the Juniper Prize for Fiction and was released in 2016. My essay collection Dark Tourist won the 2020 Gournay Prize and will be released in December 2021 by Mad Creek/Ohio State University Press.
I use they/them/their/she/her/hers pronouns.
Have you read Dark Tourist: Essays or will you be picking it up?
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