Tanya Selvaratnam, Multimedia Storyteller and Advocate

92-136. Tanya Selvaratnam
SPEAKERS
Will Bachman, Tanya Selvaratnam

Will Bachman  00:02
Hello and welcome to the 92 report conversations with members of the Harvard and Radcliffe class of 1992 I’m your host. Will Bachman, and I am delighted to be here today with Tanya. Selvaratnam, Tanya, welcome to the show. Thank you, Will, Tanya. I’m so delighted to be speaking with you. Why don’t we start by I’ll ask you to tell me about your journey since graduating from Harvard.

Tanya Selvaratnam  00:30
Well, it’s been all over the place. I guess I’m indecisive, but first, my journey from Harvard, took me back to Harvard. I moved to New York after graduating, and worked at the Columbia Law School, at the Center for Chinese Legal Studies. And I was also moonlighting as an assistant to Anna Deavere Smith on her show at the Public Theater Twilight Los Angeles, 1992 about the LA riots. And for me, growing up in LA, specifically in Long Beach, California, that was a mind blowing and meaningful experience for me. And then I went back to Harvard for graduate school, where I was studying Chinese language and the history of law. But while I was in graduate school, my father passed away. He died from cancer, and I didn’t know where I was going, what I was going to do, and I was back in New York working on the Women’s Conference in China. So working at an office near the United Nations, and while I was in New York, I was walking around aimlessly past a space on Wooster Street in Soho, and it said the performing garage on a green sign outside. And there was a poster for a show by the Wooster Group. And I remembered seeing projects by the Wooster Group on PBS, on a show called alive from off center, watching in Long Beach, California. And I just slipped a note on the door, you know, on a whim, saying, Hey, I love your work. I’m in New York. If you need help on anything, let me know. And somebody called me that day, and I went in the next day, and suddenly I was interning at the Worcester group, and I I was asked one day, pretty soon after I started interning there, to come to a rehearsal on a weekend, which was unusual, and without any preparation, I was asked to get on stage, and then before I knew it, I was performing with the Wooster Group, and I had no intention of becoming a performer, actor, going into theater. I had always done it in high school, college, going back to elementary school. But I never thought that I would do it as a vocation. But this came out of the blue, and it was timing and circumstance and emotionally, right, and I started touring all over the world with them and working with other companies, like the Builders Association and, yeah, I mean, I haven’t talked about my trajectory in a really long time, and now talking about it, I get kind of confused, but it’s been full of twists and turns, and ultimately, it’s landed me in a place where I’m sitting here talking to you in Portland, Oregon, next door to China Forbes, who is our classmate and the musician and amazing person, lead singer of Pink Martini, and about 10 minutes away from Thomas Lauderdale, our classmate who is the band leader of Pink Martini, and I’m just happy to be here, and I have wild memories of my time at Harvard and my most meaningful relationships. Most of my most meaningful relationships were formed at Harvard. So my journey, what am I doing now? I am I say I write books, and I make movies, and I also advise and consult many, many, many different organizations, foundations and corporations. Most recently, I started advising the Open Future Lab, which is based in Vienna, Austria. I just got back from. A month in Europe, and, yeah, that’s me, kind of

Will Bachman  05:08
I love so much that you slipped this note under the door, and that just kind of led to this whole career as an actor and performer. And I will just mention, normally, we leave this to the end, but for someone who wants to read your whole bio, you know, Tanya turns updotcom is is your website, and your bio is on there, and tell us a little bit more about you. In addition to being a performer, you’ve also been a producer and worked with many arts and social justice organizations. Keep going with that narrative. Tell us how did that acting also lead into producing and the social justice that you’ve done, you’ve done five or six super impressive careers. Tell us how these interlaced and one thing led to another.

Tanya Selvaratnam  06:01
Well, my goal is to have just one career, which I’m finally figuring out. But I started producing when I was working at the MS Foundation For Women. Soon after the Women’s Conference in China, I was asked to work on what was then called, take our daughters to work day. And of course, there were lots of protests, you know, what? About the sons? And it became, take our children to work and and so I was working on that. And special projects coordinator worked also on the Gloria awards, named after Gloria Steinem to honor leaders in various fields. And while I was working at the MS foundation, I got a call from Jed Weintraub, who was a little bit ahead of me at Harvard, and whom I had done a show with at Harvard when he directed Dracula, I was the butler, okay, and Jed and I had stayed in contact since graduating from college, and he reached out When he was in New York. He had gone the Hollywood route was working in a studio. I had gone the independent route was working at, you know, in theater still, and doing shows at the Worcester group. I forgot that part I was at the Worcester group while I was working at the MS foundation for women and and Jed said he was thinking about me because he wanted to make a movie that he was writing, and thought that I should produce it with him. And I had never produced a movie before, and it was so out of nowhere that and I love Jed, and you know, still are in close contact and and I said, Sure. And so we went for it, and that film became online, which was about people who spend too much time looking for love and connection in video chat rooms. It was very ahead of its time. Actually, this was in the late 90s that we started working on it, and it premiered at Sundance in 2002 then went to the Berlin Film Festival. And because of those festivals, people thought I could produce, and started asking me randomly to produce stuff, and before I knew it, I was producing. So there’s, there’s a theme here. I I followed the road when it opened up for me and and thankfully, those roads worked out to lead to, you know, further pastors and I have been producing since then. And I was always organizing events from the time I was in grade school, and I would produce events at high school, when I was at Phillips Academy in Andover and at Harvard, you know, Thomas and I used to organize a lot of events. I worked on Cafe Mardi with him in the Adams House, lower common room. Thomas was the social director of Adams House. I remember he had the keys to the pool, and we infamously, maybe led to the closing of the Adams House pool, and I would cook for Cafe Mardi. So I was always organizing big dinner parties, organizing events. And so producing a film was a great progression from from that experience, and what’s

Will Bachman  09:58
the first event in. You can recall organizing, you say you’ve been doing it like even, you know, high school and earlier,

Tanya Selvaratnam  10:06
I used to, well, I was the head of the South Asian students association at Andover. There weren’t very many of us in it. And to increase the size of the gatherings so that it was, you know, not so tiny. I mean, there was a handful. Maybe I would cook dinners for for anyone who wanted to come. And I think we charged. I think, I think, Well, I would cook Big South Asian meals, and anyone could come. And that was really fun. So I was organizing dinner parties and also gatherings for the South Asian students association. And I was also on the divestment committee. I was the student representative at Andover, and so I was meeting with faculty and representatives of Phillips Academy to discuss divestment from South Africa related investments. This was during the days of apartheid, and I would organize events on the steps of widener? No Widener was at Harvard. What was our wait steps of the Phillips Academy, Phillips Academy library, whatever. They’re all blurring because there are these East Coast institutions all based in Massachusetts. So I was organizing events on the steps of the library at Phillips Academy to raise awareness about activism and advocacy and doing the right thing. So we would have readings of poetry and essays and performances. And that was a beautiful experience. I loved bringing people together through art, and so those were my first experiences organizing. And then, of course, when I was at the Women’s Conference in China, I was organizing events for the youth tent. It was the first time that they were bringing hundreds and hundreds of young people from all over the world to participate in the women’s conference in China. And I remember organizing a gigantic, almost like variety show for lots of people in this big theater. And I remember there was a ballet company from Norway, and there were, there were indigenous singers from the Philippines. And I performed a piece called the wet sari syndrome was, which was a take on Bollywood movies, you know, because they couldn’t have sex scenes, they would just have wet sari scenes. And so I would, you know, do this performance where I would have its old jugs of water that they would throw on me while I danced through the aisles. I haven’t thought about that one in a long time. So, yeah, those were my first experiences organizing events. And so producing was an offshoot of producing films was an offshoot of producing live events. And Jed taught me a lot because he was already working the studio system. Yeah,

Will Bachman  13:25
on that. So you came into the film industry. The interesting way you coming in sort of directly as a producer, working with with with a friend and trusted colleague. What was it like for you starting in that role, maybe I’m assuming, not really being familiar already with the technical aspects of editing and cinema, photography and screenwriting and and all those pieces. What was it like, kind of learning the craft, or to what extent you did and so that you could serve as the producer?

Tanya Selvaratnam  14:02
Well, I listen and I study and I work really hard. That was something I remember at the Wooster Group, the people who started the Wooster Group would tell me that I stood out because I was willing to work hard. And, you know, back then, we didn’t have cell phones that we were looking at all the time, but I noticed, like when I’m working on any project now, how many people are looking at their phones while they’re supposed to be working. And I would never be that person who’s looking at my phone while I’m working. And I was willing to run errands and, you know, clean up the stage and do all the things that just felt helpful to you know, because people don’t realize, like, making art is not all glamorous. There’s a lot of grunt work. And nuts and bolts, stuff that you have to take care of. So for me, it’s about figuring out, like, what’s everything that goes into the to make the organism come to life? And I was so, I would just, I was very task oriented. I would focus on what needed to happen to make the film come together. So, like, locations, okay, we need to shoot this scene. This isn’t a cafe. I need to find a cafe. We need to shoot this. It’s in a apartment. I need to find apartments. So it was like, you know, tapping on my resources and connections, my network, to make the shoots possible, and just being attentive to what Jed as the director needed to realize his vision, and helping with I was I became a soup to nuts. Producer very, very quickly identifying what needed to happen, and it worked. I will say like, now I’m at a place where I want to produce less and less. I feel like now that I’ve done it for almost 30 years, that I want to, as I said, you know, I’m trying to figure out what’s the one career, as opposed to having five or six careers, because I always felt like I did, like I did what I needed to do to make what I wanted to do possible. So in those early years of producing, I was also working in, you know, restaurants, in doctor’s offices, and even through high school and college, I was working at, you know, I worked at patisserie Francaise on JFK Street as a cook and as a waiter, and I also unexpectedly became a short order cook on at Tommy’s lunch. And that happened very randomly. I used to go there to play pinball because I loved pinball. I still love pinball. I love pinball so much. It’s just hard to find pinball machines. But, um, I would go there to play pinball. And I remember Shay, who worked at Tommy’s lunch one night. He was short staffed, and just asked if I could help him out. And I was so good at it, he’s asked if I wanted a job. So sometimes I my big regret is I would let stuff outside of my studies interfere with my time. I wish that I had not been so entrepreneurial. And does you know, that I didn’t want to be self sufficient so much financially, because I would have probably worked less and done less outside of my studies and studied more like I think about going back to school a lot.

Will Bachman  17:56
I love this idea that success as a producer and organizer kind of boiled down to at least one part of it was willing to do the grunt work and dig in. Give us another example or two of what that looked like in practice. You know, some specific thing that comes to mind that like, yeah, maybe not everybody would have done that, but I dug in, and I was the person you could trust to just get it done.

Tanya Selvaratnam  18:27
Well, I was really fortunate to work with Jed who appreciated and respected what I brought to the table. That hasn’t always been the case. I’ve definitely encountered a lot of bullying and harassment, and I’ve always felt like I’m from the time as a child, and I’ve always just focused on what I needed to do to keep going, and focused on my tasks and the work. And I feel like I’ve put up with more than I should have in a lot of situations. And I had a interesting experience on that film working with Jed where there was another person on the project who was just had it in for me from the time I from the time we started working together, and it didn’t matter how nice and how joyful I was, in fact, that that almost made it worse. He was just really mean to me and always second guessing me and doubting me and and and that. So that’s a roundabout way of saying like that, grunt work can also be things that make you uncomfortable. How do you withstand situations where you are not totally comfortable or put down? And so I was always just focused on the work. I. So I had talked to Jed about it, and I think he tried to intervene. But you know, when somebody has it in for you, there’s really little you can do. And I see so much. I mean, I have a hard time often at working inside places where that behavior is tolerated. I see it so much. I’ve seen it almost everywhere, just power dynamics, power corrupts, it’s nuts, it’s horrible. So I feel like part of me just wants to kind of escape from all that, which is why I come to Portland, because I come to Portland to write, to get away from everything and to just hide, because I don’t feel the tug of 1000 things when I’m here, which is amazing.

Will Bachman  20:49
Now, you mentioned that you are a person who writes, who makes movies and who writes books, and I have your two books right here, and my hands in front of me, The Big Lie motherhood, feminism and the reality of the biological clock that I think grew out of you know, your own, your own struggles with fertility and assume nothing, a story of intimate violence about you know the terrible experience you endured with Eric Schneiderman. You know, you’ve told the stories in the books, and you’ve been on, you know, tons of media talking about them. And I don’t want to make this whole podcast about those, but, you know, talk to talk to me about that a little bit. Maybe I’d be interested to hear about the kind of the aftermath of of all that experience for you, like, after the book, after those events happened.

Tanya Selvaratnam  21:41
Well, I they were not books I intended to write. I was actually writing different books in both situations when these books appeared, and they appeared because while working on other projects, I started going through difficult experiences, and I was trying to make sense of them. And I’ve always been an intrepid journal keeper. I keep contemporaneous notes, and I have been that way since I was in, you know, four and my journals helped me make sense of the world, and I was when I look back at my notes, sometimes I see themes that emerge, or I see I see an essay or a poem or a movie or a book, and I was keeping notes when I was going through fertility issues, and I had three miscarriages, and I started writing a book about the different paths to motherhood. And while I was working on this book, then I got and actually, originally I was working on a book on Sri Lanka, that’s what I was originally writing. So I was already writing a lot, and then I started going through fertility issues, and I was wondering why there was so much misinformation out there about our fertility, and why hadn’t we been taught about fertility awareness when we were learning about sex education, and I felt like our sex education is totally A mess. And then realizing that much of America has very incomplete or inaccurate sex education. There are abstinence only sex education and that we’re taught how to prevent pregnancy and STDs, but we’re not taught how to have healthy relationships and how to how to navigate becoming a parent, and there’s so much pressure on us to have a biological child, without talking about the different ways to become a parent, and I decided to write a book about that that I hoped would help others. Because for me, I believe when life throws you lemons, make art. That’s what I’ve always tried to do. And I’m grateful that I’m an artist, I’m grateful that I’m a writer, that I can use those skills to navigate hard times for myself. And I feel like if I can write something about my difficult experiences that can help others, that is a good way for me to exist in this world. And so I wrote the big lie. And the big lie is that we can do things on our own timetables, that when we’re ready to have a child, that science will make it possible for us. And so that’s the big lie. And while I was writing the big lie. Then I also was diagnosed with two different types of cancer. So then it became a book, not just about starting, you know, giving birth to a new life, but to saving my own life. And so I. That was a surprise. It was a surprise, even to my editor, who acquired the book before that was all happening. And then he read the first draft, he was like, what? And then not long after the big lie came out, which came out in 2014 in 2016 I then met Eric Schneiderman, who was at the time the former, you know, he was at that time, the Attorney General of New York State, and we were in a relationship for about a year. And over the course of that year, I was entrapped in a very abusive relationship with him, and I got out of it with the help of friends and an amazing domestic violence expert and attorney that a friend connected. Me with because I was terrified. I didn’t know how to, how to I didn’t know what to do. And they or they helped me, and it was when I realized that I was part of a pattern which happened very unexpectedly, which is that a friend of mine, who had helped me move my things out of his place, the very next day, she wanted to speak with me, and she said that she had met up with a friend who, turns out knew a previous girlfriend of Eric Schneiderman, and she just asked him casually about this other friend and Eric Schneiderman. And he said, Oh, you mean the slapping and spitting and choking. And I was like, we both were totally floored by this, and I remember speaking with the domestic violence attorney, Jennifer Friedman, and she said, Okay, now there’s her and you. And we were almost 10 years apart, this previous girlfriend and me, how many others are there? And that’s when I decided I needed to prevent him from harming other women, because I thought that I was the only one, because abusers are very skilled at customizing their abuse and making you think that you’re responsible for it in some way. And I spoke with David Remnick of the New Yorker. The reason I spoke with him is that I had been confiding in a friend whom I was working for at the time, Cindy Levy, the editor in chief of glamor magazine then, and she was, you know, following my cue about what I wanted to do, and we had discussed different scenarios for preventing him from harming other women, and realizing that most of the other pathways my safety could not be guaranteed. It was never guaranteed, but that because he was the top law enforcement officer in New York State, that it was especially dangerous and risky. And it was a few months after the Harvey Weinstein story had come out, and there was a wave of people breaking the silence about their abusive experiences, and I felt a responsibility to do something, and so I came forward in an investigative piece by Jane Mayer and Ronan Farrow of The New Yorker, who were able to track down other victims of Eric Schneiderman. So there were two women on the record, two women on deep background, and so the allegations were credible, and also it was inevitable that it was going to come out, and that was in May 2018 I went into hiding. Right afterwards, I left the country, and I had no intention of saying anything else about my experience. I felt like I’d done what I needed to do, but there were so many people that reached out to me to share about their own experiences, and I felt like, as with the big lie, why I started writing it, I wondered, why aren’t more people talking about these issues that impact all of us in some way. It is one in three women and one in seven men will encounter some form of harassment, abuse and violence in their lifetimes, and most of them before they turn 30 years old. And I thought, why aren’t we talking about these issues, and why aren’t we figuring out how to embrace our woundedness? And break the cycle of generational violence that is all around us. And so I decided to write an opinion piece for The New York Times about sharing my story of abuse. And that led to a book, assume nothing, a story of intimate violence. And that book continues that came out in 2021 and it continues to take me all over the world to talk about this issue. I used to be humiliated by my story. I still feel uncomfortable talking about it, but I hope that by sharing it, that it helps other people get out of their own experiences with abuse, or to help their loved ones who might be experiencing abuse. So I

Will Bachman  30:57
just started reading, assume nothing yesterday. I couldn’t put it down, and I’m, it’s, it’s extraordinary book. I’m going to give it to my daughters. And it’s, I think, someone who just hears your story, you know, from the out, just the sort of the one sentence version would say, how, how could this accomplished woman like let herself get into that situation. Why did she endure it? And the way you explain how it kind of happened, step by step, and just, you know, gradual little things, you know, I mean, it’s pretty cool, dating the Attorney General, and he was, you know, quite charming, and so forth. And then there was just this step by step. So I think helping tell your story of how that happened is very powerful and brave.

Tanya Selvaratnam  31:45
Thank you. Well, I wrote the book. It’s structured to take people through the stages that most victims go through to be in an abusive relationship, and it it ends on a note of hope and triumph, which is how to get out and how to how to, how to, how to be in the world.

Will Bachman  32:05
Why did you go into hiding? Because he

Tanya Selvaratnam  32:08
was the top law enforcement officer in New York State, and because he had told me that he could have me followed and have my phones tapped when we were in a relationship. And I, I think you cannot anticipate how far someone will go to protect themselves when they feel like everything is being taken away from them. And we’ve seen in many, you know, I’ve had so many people reach out to me to tell me about their stories of abuse, some of them involving very, very powerful people. I wish that I didn’t know these stories, because most of the people that share their stories with me Do not come forward about them. So these perpetrators are out there, and I know about them, and I can’t do anything, but it’s it’s a very individual choice whether to come forward, whether to share one story, even privately, to prevent somebody who’s an abuser, from harming other people. I felt, uh, a responsibility to do something, because I wish somebody had warned me so I didn’t have the memories that I have. I really wish I didn’t have these memories, but, um, and I was determined to prevent others from having these memories. And after my story came out both after the New Yorker piece came out, and then after my book came out, I was hearing from other victims of Eric Schneiderman who hadn’t been participated in the original New Yorker investigation. And so I thought, Wow, this had been going on for a really long time. One of his victims had been abused by him when he was at Harvard Law School. Yeah, Harvard sometimes produces some not great people or attracts some not great people. I

Will Bachman  33:54
wanted to make space in this show. Thank you for for sharing that and so again, assume nothing. I mean, we’ll include a link in the show notes. I mean, it’s extraordinary. Book. Switching gears a little bit. I did want to get have some space in this to talk a little bit about your work for museums. You’ve done some work for major museums, and I’d love to hear a little bit about that.

Tanya Selvaratnam  34:20
As a producer and organizer of live events, I’ve been so fortunate to work with amazing cultural institutions around the world. Jennifer Rubell, who was at Harvard with us, I worked for her family, for the Rubell family collection, which is now the Rubel Museum in Miami, working on events during Art Basel Miami for nine years, and that was an amazing experience. And before that, I was working with lots of artists through my work as an organizer, you know, at the Women’s Conference in China at the Public Theater, working for Anna Deavere Smith and working as a performer myself with the Wooster Group and the Builders Association, going all over the world, working at institutions like the Brooklyn Academy of Music, at the Barbican in London, at the Victoria theater in Singapore. So going all over, I mean, I went to like, 62 cities over the course of 12 years with different shows and projects. And then, of course, the film festivals. You know, I’ve done a lot of work with the Sundance Film Festival and I and the New York Film Festival as well. When I was working on the Federation, which was with the artist Laurie Anderson and the producer Laura Michalchyshyn, we were putting together a coalition of artists and cultural organizations and allies to show how art unites us and to keep cultural borders open. And it was in response to the travel bans that were happening in early 2017, and so that brought me into collaboration with so many more cultural institutions, and it was a beautiful, beautiful experience. And most recently, I was in Torino in Italy, working with Carrie Mae Weems, whom I’ve been working on projects for 17 years now, really long time. And Carrie is was at the Torino book fair, working with the Polaroid Foundation, which is through Alex Marashian, who is also see Harvard, keeps popping up. Alex Marashian, who was a classmate at Harvard, and it does amazing, amazing projects, including with the Polaroid Foundation. And so I got to work with Alex and Carrie Mae at the Galleria di Italia in Torino and photographing with this gigantic Polaroid that takes 20 by 24 images. It’s a huge machine. There’s only five in the world. It was built in the late 1970s and Carrie was creating portraits of writers from around the world at the Torino book fair, and that project will debut probably around this time next year at the Torino book fair as well. So I just got back last week.

Will Bachman  37:19
What are you excited to work on next

Tanya Selvaratnam  37:22
well, I have a film that I co directed and also produced called Love to the max, a documentary short that was acquired by the New Yorker magazine. It’s just 13 minutes long. It’s publicly available because it’s been nominated for some awards, and they removed the paywall so anyone can see it if you search love to the max on the New Yorker. And it’s about the Brill family in Texas, and specifically about them being targeted for loving and supporting their trans kid. And it was recently nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary Short, which was very exciting. I was totally surprised when I got the news. I started receiving text messages from people about the Emmys, and I was like, what? Because you just never know. Like I made it because I felt a calling to make it, because the mother of Max Briggle, who’s the star of the film, his mom had reached out to this women’s listserv that I’m a part of, called the list, and she was asking for help because child protection services had shown up at her door. And so I emailed her on this listserv saying, you know, document everything that’s happening. And I was at the time producing for story Syndicate, which is Harvard again, Liz. So it’s Dan Cogan, who is married to Liz Garbus, the and they’re both amazing producers, and Liz an amazing director. So Dan was also at Harvard with us, and I was producing projects for them already, and I reached out to story Syndicate, to John Barden there, whom I was working very closely with. And I said, Hey, what do you think of this? This is this story has come across my radar. And he said to go for it. And so I reached back out to Amber Briggle, and I was encouraged by another person on the list, Genevieve Roth, who had worked with me before and knew me as a producer, and said, you know, you should, you could be making this. And I was already thinking about it. And so it just felt like it was meant to be. And Amber and her family were on board with exploring the possibility, and I did a test shoot exploring the project in July of 2022, and went to Texas, spent time with them, and. And that exploratory shoot then became love to the max, and two years later, it was premiering on The New Yorker, and then now it’s nominated for an Emmy Award, so that’s coming up pretty soon. And so that’s my focus. And then I’ve been working for 17 years, no maybe more 18, almost 18 years, with Catherine Gund, the founder of Aubin pictures, and so I produced with her a film that is called Paint me a road out of here that’s making the rounds right now. And it’s about the interconnected journeys of Faith Ringgold and Mary Baxter, artists, Faith Ringgold, very beloved, who passed away pretty recently, so we made this movie looking at their interconnected journeys, and I am working on a new book that the working title is called, love me and leave me. And it’s about a quest for intimacy. And it’s been a lot of fun to write. So it’s about adventures through intimate pleasure and intimacy in many forms.

Will Bachman  41:10
Tanya, talk to me about any courses or professors or activities that you were involved in, or courses you took at Harvard that continue to resonate with you in some way,

Tanya Selvaratnam  41:23
I it took me a while to figure out what I wanted to study at Harvard. I came in thinking that I was going to study science because I was so good at math and sciences all throughout my years previously, I remember being very proud to be the only, or maybe one of two young women in my math and science courses taking, you know, vector calculus and quantum mechanics and things like that. So I thought that I would go into science. When I got to Harvard, I was really floundering for many reasons, and the classes were so gigantic. There were hundreds of people in the science courses, even though there were like small study groups outside of them, and I was yearning for a more intimate experience taking classes. Then I switched to the classics in that first year, and that wasn’t, to be honest, a great experience either. They weren’t very exciting courses. I had had the most amazing classics teachers when I was

Will Bachman  42:42
in high school, were you? You had studied Latin or Greek? Yeah, both. Okay.

Tanya Selvaratnam  42:49
So then I floundered, and then I, you know, I’d taken Chinese from the time I was 13, I mean, and I actually spent two summers in Harbin China as an exchange student when I was in high school. And I thought, well, I really love Chinese. I didn’t think that I could do more with it, but it was in the early days of people studying Chinese. Now it’s like everybody in kindergarten is studying Chinese, but back then, very few people were studying it, and there were amazing teachers at Harvard, and so I and so I started studying Chinese again and got into Chinese history, and specifically Chinese legal history. I was cross registered at the law school because there were not, because the classes that I wanted to take with Professor Chang Weijen, who was a visiting scholar, and Professor Alford, who was at Harvard Law School. They were amazing teachers. I loved taking classes with them. And I remember at the when I was an undergrad, taking courses with Professor Kuhn. And I remember Professor Bol, he was very tough. He was really tough on me, but, and I remember him being quite stern about me doing too much theater, because I always did a lot of theater, and I was doing too much like he was right, but he thought it was interfering with my classes, which it was. So I remember him and Caroline Reeves, who was a graduate student, and I remember she helped me get the idea for what my my thesis would be about. She told me to look in a history book, turn to the index, put my finger on the page, and what my finger pointed to in the index I might maybe wanted to explore. And I did that, and my finger landed on widows in this book, this history book, widows. I was like, what? And then I started looking into widows, and learned that widows were actually very pivotal in in modernization efforts in China, because widows had. Previously been considered dead people outcasts when their husbands died, they had, you know, they had no legal rights, they had no place in society. And so to show that they were modernizing, they started elevating the rights and status of widows. And I thought, well, this is something to explore, as I was looking at the, you know, late Qing Dynasty China and the position of widows,

Will Bachman  45:26
with the index method, with the yes true story. Wow. Tell us how we can find out what you’re working on. Keep track of you list classmates who want to find out the latest with you,

Tanya Selvaratnam  45:45
the best is from my website, tanyaturnsup.com and Tanya turns up was also Harvard related. It’s a nickname that I got when I was an undergrad because I was people could count on me to turn up, whether it be like socially or professionally, and it was actually David Gammons, who was also a classmate at Harvard and whom I did a lot of theater with, who would say, when I’d walk into a room, Tanya turns up. Tanya turns up. So tanyaturnsup.com. I sometimes think about changing it, because now I feel more like Tanya tunes out, I want to be no for real. Like, tunes out, I actually deleted all my social media accounts, which I’ve done before. Like, I deleted my social media accounts in 2018 before the New Yorker story came out. And then I rejoined when my my most recent book was about to come out, at the encouragement of my publisher, who wanted to be back on social media, but then I deleted them again, many, many months ago, and I don’t miss them at all. The only thing I’m on is LinkedIn, because LinkedIn is basically like online professional resume and doesn’t seem as as uh, harmful as the other social media platforms. So, so I’m still on LinkedIn. People can find me there. It’s just Tanya author,

Will Bachman  47:09
okay, we will include those links in the show notes, Tanya, I’m grateful for you coming on the show today and sharing your journey.

Tanya Selvaratnam  47:18
Thank you so much. That was all over the place