Venuri Siriwardane

Here's what you won't find on my resume:

I was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka during one of the bloodiest periods of that country’s civil war. Though my parents belonged to a privileged class, the thought of spending their lives dodging roadside bombs compelled them to immigrate to the West.

We landed in New York City, where my parents raised me while struggling to gain a foothold in a culture that treated them like interlopers. I was mercilessly teased in school for my foreignness — really, my cluelessness — and began devouring books, watching TV and consuming whatever popular media I could. I worked hard at becoming American. Perhaps that’s why I excelled in English and developed an active imagination.

I dreamt of a writing career after my fifth grade teacher gave me a card on the last day of school. It read: “Dear Venuri, I hope to one day buy a bestseller with your name on it. Love, Mrs. Schwartz.” At 15, I decided I would be a journalist: If I wrote about people who mattered, maybe I would matter, too.

A decade and half a dozen journalism jobs later, I wondered if I had made the right choices. I won’t add the details here; my work history is in plain sight on the internet. I’m grateful for those experiences, but they left me desperately wanting.

I quit the cub reporter life to pursue a master’s degree in Politics and Communication at The London School of Economics — the perfect place in which to explore my transnational identity. I picked up a vocabulary that made me sound like I knew what I was talking about: I tossed around words such as ‘agency,’ ‘subaltern,’ ‘normative,’ and ‘discursive’ without fully understanding what they meant. I now realize we will never know — let alone agree on — what those concepts truly mean.

Fresh off grad school, I continue to think about social constructs — race, class, gender, sexuality — and how they intersect to create human narratives. Do reach out if you share my love of that human tapestry and desire to better understand it.