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Dark Tourist: Essays
“Shimmers with honesty, vulnerability, and circumspection.” —Kirkus
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.
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.
190 pages, Paperback
First published December 10, 2021
7 people are currently reading
1271 people want to read
About the author
Hasanthika Sirisena
9 books16 followersMy 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.
I use they/them/their/she/her/hers pronouns.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
November 26, 2023
The essay is easily my favourite non-fiction form. I loved Elissa Washuta's White Magic last month, and Hasanthika Sirisena's Dark Tourist - also from my 2023 reading list - is almost as good. Sirisena was born in Sri Lanka but grew up in the US. As with White Magic, the blurb of this book is a bit misleading - it claims that Sirisena uses the lens of dark tourism to explore the 'unexpected places (and ways) in which personal identity and the riptides of history meet', but only a few of these essays actually do that. All, however, are brilliant, bringing together distant history, contemporary history and personal trauma to illuminate subjects like marriage, decision-making, diagnosis and Buddhism. In 'Confessions of a Dark Tourist', an essay which deals with her experience of going on a 'war tour' to Jaffna and Mullaitivu in the wake of the Sri Lankan civil war, Sirisena quotes Richard Sharpley's and Philip R. Stone's definition of dark tourism as 'the act of travel to sites associated with death, suffering and the seeming macabre'. There are also a few oddities: an essay in alphabet sketches, an essay that's just a list of queer and trans touchstones. As always, however, it was the essays on art that really struck me, though I didn't agree with everything she says. Sirisena, who trained as a visual artist but then didn't make any art for twenty-five years, is especially good on the practice of art-making, and the frustrations we can feel as more experienced artists when it seems like we've heard everything before. In 'Six Drawing Lessons', she writes:
If I think, however, of the now nearly lost denotation of lesson, a passage of scripture read during a religious service... I recognise that being constantly taught is a component of discipline. It's not, after all, as if after a half century of churchgoing, a parishioner can get up from the pew, walk out, and come back when the reading is over. It's part of the practice of faith, an act of humbling oneself, to remain even when you've heard the words many times before.
As Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes in Women Who Run With the Wolves, 'to love is to stay with' - to remain, even when you think you know what is coming.
If I think, however, of the now nearly lost denotation of lesson, a passage of scripture read during a religious service... I recognise that being constantly taught is a component of discipline. It's not, after all, as if after a half century of churchgoing, a parishioner can get up from the pew, walk out, and come back when the reading is over. It's part of the practice of faith, an act of humbling oneself, to remain even when you've heard the words many times before.
As Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes in Women Who Run With the Wolves, 'to love is to stay with' - to remain, even when you think you know what is coming.
January 5, 2023
"The contrivances of Disney World and Las Vegas are designed for the tourist's comfort and enjoyment, but the dark tourist site promises an "authentic" brush with death, grief, mayhem, murder. And the experience promises to be transformative: the dark tourist goes from passive bystander and mere consumer of history to witness, with all the uniqueness and privilege that being a witness affords in this culture."
From the title and the synopsis, I expected the book to take a slightly different approach and focus more on dark tourism/disaster tourism as a phenomenon. While there are essays here that do that, like the excellent "Confessions of a Dark Tourist" where Sirisena relates travelling to Jaffna on a war tour only two years after the defeat of the LTTE, most pieces situate the site of the trauma in the abstract past, in family illness, in bodily violence that gets revisited in the act of recollection or retracing older steps, usually through narrative juxtapositions where associations are fantastic metaphysical conceits.
"Amblyopia: A Medical History", another essay that stands out, charts Sirisena's experience of living with a 'lazy eye' after an accident in short fragmented sections as she frequently refers to Milton. " Broken Arrow" alternates "reflections on her father's stroke" with the 1961 crash of a plane carrying a nuclear warhead while "Lady" revolves around her mother's chronic illness and alternates with a brief exploration of Lady Windmere Syndrome that appeared soon after stagings of the eponymous Oscar Wilde play. Overall, it is a collection of thoughtful and revelatory essays that ably plumb the personal.
(I received a finished copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.)
April 14, 2025
These essays didn't elicit a strong personal connection for me, but I left the collection so inspired by how Sirisen implements different modes of research writing. I have a few clear takeaways from this that I want to implement in my current writing projects, and that is worth its weight in gold.
November 22, 2021
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.
Full review on my blog.
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!
Full review on my blog.
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!
September 2, 2024
3.44/5, some really great quotes tho!
“We perceive whatever details allow us to make a palatable narrative of another person’s suffering—that story a talisman against the overwhelming darkness of another’s pain.”
“To be a political artist in America is to engage in fisticuffs in the carnival rather than to really stand and oppose an oppressive regime.”
“It is not that every act of violence has had its public relations, its brochures, its paintings and murals of a better life. But rather, and more difficult to apprehend, is that every act of enlightenment, all the missions to save souls, all the best impulses, are so dogged by the weight of what follows them: their shadow, the violence that accompanies enlightenment.” (Author Sirisena quoting an artist dude, Kentridge.)
“We look at something usually taken for granted, the passage of time, the movement of a person, and in the studio we demand its reconstruction, its shattering. Time changed into marked graduations of animation: learning its grammar in hope that in the end something different will emerge.” (Author quoting Kentridge again, this quote fire.)
“From there he moves to the attempt in the 19th century to synchronize all clocks and how Europe dictated those synchronized times to its colonies, creating a grid that resembles a bird cage, a kind of geography of time. The colonial rebellions, Kentridge notes correctly, were rebellions against this imposition of time.”
!!!!!
Ok and FINALLY the author touches on the concept of mistranslation. Sirisena states that a Buddhist monk told her the PALI DUKKHA was MISTRANSLATED by WESTERN SCHOLARS... !!!!?!! They translated the word to mean suffering, but the monk told the author it has a “far broader meaning” than suffering... ->
“It does imply pain but it’s more accurate, but far less elegant, to translate dukkah into a sort of continual craving. The hunger you feel when you’ve missed a meal, is how the monk put it. But, the monk also insisted, this hunger is never ceasing.”
This is wildly infuriating to learn. And my dad and I were just talking about the ongoing colonization of education and language… Like this mistranslation is truly an egregious act of disrespect.
Okk, the end!
“We perceive whatever details allow us to make a palatable narrative of another person’s suffering—that story a talisman against the overwhelming darkness of another’s pain.”
“To be a political artist in America is to engage in fisticuffs in the carnival rather than to really stand and oppose an oppressive regime.”
“It is not that every act of violence has had its public relations, its brochures, its paintings and murals of a better life. But rather, and more difficult to apprehend, is that every act of enlightenment, all the missions to save souls, all the best impulses, are so dogged by the weight of what follows them: their shadow, the violence that accompanies enlightenment.” (Author Sirisena quoting an artist dude, Kentridge.)
“We look at something usually taken for granted, the passage of time, the movement of a person, and in the studio we demand its reconstruction, its shattering. Time changed into marked graduations of animation: learning its grammar in hope that in the end something different will emerge.” (Author quoting Kentridge again, this quote fire.)
“From there he moves to the attempt in the 19th century to synchronize all clocks and how Europe dictated those synchronized times to its colonies, creating a grid that resembles a bird cage, a kind of geography of time. The colonial rebellions, Kentridge notes correctly, were rebellions against this imposition of time.”
!!!!!
Ok and FINALLY the author touches on the concept of mistranslation. Sirisena states that a Buddhist monk told her the PALI DUKKHA was MISTRANSLATED by WESTERN SCHOLARS... !!!!?!! They translated the word to mean suffering, but the monk told the author it has a “far broader meaning” than suffering... ->
“It does imply pain but it’s more accurate, but far less elegant, to translate dukkah into a sort of continual craving. The hunger you feel when you’ve missed a meal, is how the monk put it. But, the monk also insisted, this hunger is never ceasing.”
This is wildly infuriating to learn. And my dad and I were just talking about the ongoing colonization of education and language… Like this mistranslation is truly an egregious act of disrespect.
Okk, the end!
Read
January 11, 2022dark tour·ism
The act of travel to sites associated with death, suffering, and the seeming macabre.
Dark Tourist is a collection of 11 essays in which Sirisena draws on her personal experiences* to critically comment on various aspects of culture. Contrary to what the title implies, the collection covers a wide range of topics beyond dark tourism, including art, disability, gender and queerness, and marriage.
*Sirisena is a bisexual Sri Lankan woman who grew up in England and the U.S. 🇱🇰🇬🇧🇺🇸
Since no single theme runs through the collection, it’s hard to rate and review Dark Tourist as a whole. While many essays were thought-provoking, I found the essay titled In the Presence of God I Make this Vow the most fascinating.
In this essay, Sirisena interrogates the roots of the requirement that marriage be a public display*.
*To be legally married in England & Wales, a couple is required to have a marriage ceremony with the presence of at least two witnesses (other than the couple getting married and the person conducting the ceremony). Similar requirements exist elsewhere; Singapore requires two witnesses, while only one witness is required in New York.
Sirisena traces the requirement to the Clandestine Marriages Act of 1753, which permanently transformed marriage into a public affair in England & Wales. The purpose of the Act was: (1) “to protect members of the upper class from being lured into hasty marriages by their social inferiors”; and (2) “to protect wealthy men’s property and ensure its strict transfer from people of wealth and social standing to other people of equal wealth and social standing.”
Like Sirisena, I have always been cognizant of the problems with marriage as an institution, but, until reading this essay, I never thought about the public display requirement of marriage, like where it came from, and what it says about our society. “[I]t seems strange to me how suspicious we are as a culture of any intimate relationship that doesn’t look to us, well, like the state of being married.”
tl;dr Weddings can be fun and all, but should they be legally required? 👀
The act of travel to sites associated with death, suffering, and the seeming macabre.
Dark Tourist is a collection of 11 essays in which Sirisena draws on her personal experiences* to critically comment on various aspects of culture. Contrary to what the title implies, the collection covers a wide range of topics beyond dark tourism, including art, disability, gender and queerness, and marriage.
*Sirisena is a bisexual Sri Lankan woman who grew up in England and the U.S. 🇱🇰🇬🇧🇺🇸
Since no single theme runs through the collection, it’s hard to rate and review Dark Tourist as a whole. While many essays were thought-provoking, I found the essay titled In the Presence of God I Make this Vow the most fascinating.
In this essay, Sirisena interrogates the roots of the requirement that marriage be a public display*.
*To be legally married in England & Wales, a couple is required to have a marriage ceremony with the presence of at least two witnesses (other than the couple getting married and the person conducting the ceremony). Similar requirements exist elsewhere; Singapore requires two witnesses, while only one witness is required in New York.
Sirisena traces the requirement to the Clandestine Marriages Act of 1753, which permanently transformed marriage into a public affair in England & Wales. The purpose of the Act was: (1) “to protect members of the upper class from being lured into hasty marriages by their social inferiors”; and (2) “to protect wealthy men’s property and ensure its strict transfer from people of wealth and social standing to other people of equal wealth and social standing.”
Like Sirisena, I have always been cognizant of the problems with marriage as an institution, but, until reading this essay, I never thought about the public display requirement of marriage, like where it came from, and what it says about our society. “[I]t seems strange to me how suspicious we are as a culture of any intimate relationship that doesn’t look to us, well, like the state of being married.”
tl;dr Weddings can be fun and all, but should they be legally required? 👀
Read
February 28, 2023I read about 25% of this following the strong recommendation of Laura Sackton, and it's not for me, and that's ok!
January 20, 2022
Thank you Ohio State Press for this gifted copy of DARK TOURIST: ESSAYS by Hasanthika Sirisena ❤️
An honest and piercing essay collection written in exquisite prose. Half of my bookmarks were passages or phrases I found particularly beautiful. Sirisena digs deep into everything from art to disability to queerness to immigration, pulling in events from both her personal life as well as thoroughly researched ones from history.
Her ruminations on disability were illuminating. In “Lady,” she questions the ways a naming of a disease might affect its diagnosis and treatment: Lady Windermere syndrome, the disease her mother passed away from, for instance. To this, I also think of the ways pathologization has been used as a form of othering throughout history, such as those used to mark queer folks as deviant, slaves as inferior, and women as mad. Sirisena also reflects on her own diagnosis of Horner’s syndrome, which resulted in a lazy eye that garnered a variety of reactions from lovers, relatives, doctors, and even her editor, who says “A lazy eye is not a disability” when Sirisena suggests writing about her own experiences. In other words—single-narrative tragedy and inspiration porn sells in the literary world. Sirisena admits to as much: “...as a writer, by necessity, I traffic in grief. I package it. I sell it.”
Tragedy is packaged sinisterly in dark tourism, which Sirisena explores in “Confessions of a Dark Tourist.” As she visits former battle zones, led by the Sri Lankan Army, left over from the war between the 1980s Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam began to fight Sri Lankan governments for the establishment of a Tamil homeland, Sirisena realizes how those who seek dark tourist sites often crave a brush with death, wretched in the ways that such sites, which represent ongoing trauma, are placed under the gaze of those who never had to truly experience that pain. I think of readers’ criticism of tragedy porn—I feel that the discomfort stems in part from the way we can finish a book and leave distraught characters behind. “I read to feel something,” some readers joke, but there is a certain safety for those of us who go in with distance from the pain. Sirisena herself is okay with this safety in art; in fact, she writes: “[Art] allows us to experience rage, horror, joy, excitement safely and then learn to manage those experiences in such a way that they create meaning for us. It also helps us to survive.” Granted, I’m not sure if tragedy porn is included within this analysis, but it’s an interesting way to understand how we receive writing.
An honest and piercing essay collection written in exquisite prose. Half of my bookmarks were passages or phrases I found particularly beautiful. Sirisena digs deep into everything from art to disability to queerness to immigration, pulling in events from both her personal life as well as thoroughly researched ones from history.
Her ruminations on disability were illuminating. In “Lady,” she questions the ways a naming of a disease might affect its diagnosis and treatment: Lady Windermere syndrome, the disease her mother passed away from, for instance. To this, I also think of the ways pathologization has been used as a form of othering throughout history, such as those used to mark queer folks as deviant, slaves as inferior, and women as mad. Sirisena also reflects on her own diagnosis of Horner’s syndrome, which resulted in a lazy eye that garnered a variety of reactions from lovers, relatives, doctors, and even her editor, who says “A lazy eye is not a disability” when Sirisena suggests writing about her own experiences. In other words—single-narrative tragedy and inspiration porn sells in the literary world. Sirisena admits to as much: “...as a writer, by necessity, I traffic in grief. I package it. I sell it.”
Tragedy is packaged sinisterly in dark tourism, which Sirisena explores in “Confessions of a Dark Tourist.” As she visits former battle zones, led by the Sri Lankan Army, left over from the war between the 1980s Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam began to fight Sri Lankan governments for the establishment of a Tamil homeland, Sirisena realizes how those who seek dark tourist sites often crave a brush with death, wretched in the ways that such sites, which represent ongoing trauma, are placed under the gaze of those who never had to truly experience that pain. I think of readers’ criticism of tragedy porn—I feel that the discomfort stems in part from the way we can finish a book and leave distraught characters behind. “I read to feel something,” some readers joke, but there is a certain safety for those of us who go in with distance from the pain. Sirisena herself is okay with this safety in art; in fact, she writes: “[Art] allows us to experience rage, horror, joy, excitement safely and then learn to manage those experiences in such a way that they create meaning for us. It also helps us to survive.” Granted, I’m not sure if tragedy porn is included within this analysis, but it’s an interesting way to understand how we receive writing.
December 17, 2021
Hasanthika Sirisena's "Dark Tourist: Essays" were shocking in how vulnerable and absolutely personal they were. I was astounded at the easy and free-flowing manner in which Sirisena speaks of her past and her memories. This author truly has a gift for storytelling, and most profoundly for connecting her present thoughts and the larger concepts traveling around in her mind with concrete and expository stories and tales from her past and from completely separate situations. Her vulnerability is what gives Sirisena her power, and hearing of her experiences as an immigrant was incredibly profound to me personally; having had no experience with this walk of life, I did not expect to be able to be affected so deeply and greatly as I was by her writing about the circumstance. I was also incredibly impressed by Sirisena's essay format; her writing is an emotional powerhouse, but as you go about reading it, you feel as if you are being presented with almost an educational level of information. This in no way threatens the engaging nature of her writing, but I just found it to be so incredible- I've never read any writing of this genre that appears in this format, with sources and all, and it was just so exciting to encounter and experience. Sirisena balances and juxtaposes her material within each essay so carefully that it almost seems meticulous upon a closer look, but the work is also so followable, like you are listening to a good friend speak. I was incredibly impressed with this author's writing talent and her ability to convey feeling to readers in such an elegantly worded manner without losing any sort of significance.
February 4, 2022
This collection of, mostly autobiographical, essays rambles over a territory that includes: grief, the immigrant experience, sexuality, art and catharsis, and the profound impact of self-perception on one’s experience of life. The title most directly links to one of the more evocative essays, “Confessions of a Dark Tourist,” which is about the author’s travels back to her native country, Sri Lanka, to visit the northern region where a vicious civil war played out most intensely. [For those unfamiliar with the term, “dark tourism” is travel to areas that have recently experienced upheaval due to war, economic collapse, intranational conflict, or large-scale accidents and disasters.]
I used the term “rambles” in my opening sentence, and these essays (even within essays) can take the reader places a lawyer would object to on the grounds of relevance. That said, it’s a far better thing to be rambling and interesting than tidy and dull, and this book does a good job of keeping it interesting, using stories that are (I presume) meant to symbolically link to a point at hand. Sometimes, that symbolism hits, and sometimes it might not, but it does make for a compelling read. The author is valiantly candid about her personal struggles, particularly as they pertain to issues of self-perception owing to a lazy eye and her [bi-] sexuality.
If you’re a reader of essays and creative nonfiction, I’d recommend you give this book a look.
I used the term “rambles” in my opening sentence, and these essays (even within essays) can take the reader places a lawyer would object to on the grounds of relevance. That said, it’s a far better thing to be rambling and interesting than tidy and dull, and this book does a good job of keeping it interesting, using stories that are (I presume) meant to symbolically link to a point at hand. Sometimes, that symbolism hits, and sometimes it might not, but it does make for a compelling read. The author is valiantly candid about her personal struggles, particularly as they pertain to issues of self-perception owing to a lazy eye and her [bi-] sexuality.
If you’re a reader of essays and creative nonfiction, I’d recommend you give this book a look.
May 13, 2022
I enjoyed these essays. I found that the four essays in the second half probed deeper in ways that challenged me than the essays in the first half. Both halves were worth reading, as far as I am concerned, but there was a facileness in some of the writing in the first half that seemed unwilling to probe quite as deeply as it might have done. Perhaps that is because the essays of the first half were generally more about deeply personal and clearly painful experiences, experiences that also involved family and friends who are close to the writer. I was slightly disappointed in the title essay--which was the essay I bought the book to read-- but three of the final four essays more than made up for my mild disappointment.
I think this is a collection that will reward a second reading.
I think this is a collection that will reward a second reading.
January 17, 2024
3.5
i was expecting this book to be about the author’s sri lankan heritage, and it was for the first couple chapters but then it turned into the author talking about different people and works and almost their review of them. i liked the essays that were more personal, about her father, her mother, and even her struggles with having a lazy eye (although a bit self-victimizing, woe is me at times yet still manages to be self aware of how much she trails on about this topic). the essays on william kentridge and his art process and the beatles were more boring to me. i liked the author’s writing style as well and this book gave me a lot of new vocab words lol
i was expecting this book to be about the author’s sri lankan heritage, and it was for the first couple chapters but then it turned into the author talking about different people and works and almost their review of them. i liked the essays that were more personal, about her father, her mother, and even her struggles with having a lazy eye (although a bit self-victimizing, woe is me at times yet still manages to be self aware of how much she trails on about this topic). the essays on william kentridge and his art process and the beatles were more boring to me. i liked the author’s writing style as well and this book gave me a lot of new vocab words lol
April 8, 2025
Wow! This was a trip.
Since starting to read essay collections more, this one really stands out in its ability to attack complex ideas of art criticism, gender theory stuff, cultural criticism, personal stories of the author, AND MORE, but do so somehow so academically AND readably? I think Robbie’s been making us read way too much wild shit and maybe this is the norm, but nonetheless, I felt like each essay was better than the last, and I appreciated the humility I felt from Sirisena. She’s got a big brain but this doesn’t feel pretentious in anyway.
Great collections. No misses!! Fav ofc was the Beatles essay at the end<3
Since starting to read essay collections more, this one really stands out in its ability to attack complex ideas of art criticism, gender theory stuff, cultural criticism, personal stories of the author, AND MORE, but do so somehow so academically AND readably? I think Robbie’s been making us read way too much wild shit and maybe this is the norm, but nonetheless, I felt like each essay was better than the last, and I appreciated the humility I felt from Sirisena. She’s got a big brain but this doesn’t feel pretentious in anyway.
Great collections. No misses!! Fav ofc was the Beatles essay at the end<3
July 29, 2022
3.5 stars
The essays in part 1 are far less academic in tone than those in part 2, and I enjoyed them a lot more. Sirisena did a better job of synthesizing her personal memories and her aesthetic interests in those essays. And if I may be a little harsh, the essays in part 2 just felt a bit too self-indulgent to me, and not as tightly crafted. I learned some interesting history, including a glimpse into the Sri Lanka of past and present, which I previously knew basically nothing about from any era.
The essays in part 1 are far less academic in tone than those in part 2, and I enjoyed them a lot more. Sirisena did a better job of synthesizing her personal memories and her aesthetic interests in those essays. And if I may be a little harsh, the essays in part 2 just felt a bit too self-indulgent to me, and not as tightly crafted. I learned some interesting history, including a glimpse into the Sri Lanka of past and present, which I previously knew basically nothing about from any era.
December 22, 2022
beautiful little collection of essays. i always love to read essays written by people who reference literary things/who you can tell studied literature because it reminds me of musings past (aka all the times i had thoughts for academic essays but never the bandwidth or grace to string them together). i also love the final essay, which partially breaks down the author's love for the Beatles' song "A Day in the Life."
July 12, 2022
Interesting perspectives about art, identity, and sense of self-worth based on how she has been raised on loss, life, and healing. It's neither hopeful or encouraging that it ends on a somewhat tragic note that crossed my mind reading the last chapter: should we always be challenging ourselves to be in someone else's shoes no matter the cost of how we feel about it? Perhaps.
October 19, 2023
I was dreading reading this because the nonfiction on my list recently has been so dense and dry. This was a total deviation from that, I was completely sucked in by the first page. Every essay is fascinating, and I'm sure they all connect in some genius way, but I'm not enough of a sophisticated reader to know. Either way, this was such a strong read I will be enthusiastically recommending it.
March 14, 2022
2.0.
Dark Tourist is a series of essays and reflections over the author's Sri Lankan heritage/family, gender identity, art reflections, and disability. I enjoyed the first couple that were less abstract, but found myself having difficulty with the latter essays which encompassed other works.
Dark Tourist is a series of essays and reflections over the author's Sri Lankan heritage/family, gender identity, art reflections, and disability. I enjoyed the first couple that were less abstract, but found myself having difficulty with the latter essays which encompassed other works.
June 1, 2022
These essays are simply wonderful. They range so broadly, accomplish such surprising and stimulating juxtapositions, and show such a lively intellectual curiosity. The writing is lean and eloquent. There are moments of moving vulnerability. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole collection.
December 19, 2022
Mostly excellent, but uneven. In most of the essays, I was fascinated paragraph by paragraph, even though I wasn't always sure of the larger point. There were a few essays that I didn't like as much. Overall, well worth reading.
February 1, 2024
A powerful writer who gives us a glimpse into her personal life, experience as a Sri Lankan-American, the topic of Dark Tourism, and more. I would say all the art-centric pieces at the end were my least favorite but that's just because of personal preference.
April 8, 2025
I loved the first half of this book and Sirisena’s self exploration of cultural, sexual, personal, artistic identity. The second half, to me, felt disconnected. The narrative voice shifted and felt far more academic and even clinical to me. Where Part 1 drew me in, Part 2 took me out.
April 8, 2025
501. Marsha P Johnson 502. Dark Tourist
September 13, 2022
I loved this book. I wrote about it here: https://booksandbakes.substack.com/i/...
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews