April is Sexual Violence Awareness Month and SEW is pleased to host Tanya Selvaratnam, who will discuss her new book, Assume Nothing: A Story of Intimate Violence. In Assume Nothing, Selvaratnam bravely recounts the intimate abuse she suffered while in a relationship with former NY State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and examines the domestic violence crisis.
One in four women in the United States experiences domestic violence. Selvaratnam never thought she would become part of that statistic.
Born in Sri Lanka before emigrating as a baby to Southern California, Selvaratnam witnessed her father abuse her mother. She knew the patterns and signs of domestic violence, and she did not see herself as remotely vulnerable. An ivy-league graduate, producer, author, cancer-survivor, and connected professional in the art world, she was ready to meet a romantic partner.
When Selvaratnam met then-NY State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman at the Democratic National Convention in July 2016, they seemed like the perfect match. They were both Harvard alumni; they both studied Chinese; they both were interested in spirituality and meditation. And then everything started to shift. According to Selvaratnam, Schneiderman became controlling, mean, and manipulative, drank heavily, and used sedatives. Her book recounts how Schneiderman turned violent, and isolated and manipulated her, even threatening to kill her if she left. What seemed impossible was suddenly a terrifying reality: Selvaratnam was trapped in an abusive relationship with one of the most powerful men in New York.
Assume Nothing has already received significant praise, including the following (just a few examples):
Crystal prose, precise and calm, grants Selvaratnam’s narrative of manipulative abuse, a profound ethical clarity. A grave book, a powerful and essential book. -- Kiran Desai, Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Inheritance of Loss
Assume Nothing is raw, gut-wrenching, and honest in its exposure of how—and why—women find themselves trapped in the stories that comprised their childhoods, with particular attention to the shame that comes from believing that they should have known better. -- Library Journal (starred review)
This courageous and terrifying book charts the author’s descent into an abusive relationship and also her emergence from it in taut, seductive prose. Selvaratnam explains how—even as an educated, sophisticated, liberal feminist—she was enthralled by her lover’s fame and tolerated escalating personal violence. Her narrative is vivid and bracingly frank, a tour-de-force of self-revelation and, ultimately, of redemption. -- Andrew Solomon, National Book Award-winning author of Far from the Tree and The Noonday Demon
Assume Nothing demonstrates that violence against women exists across race, class, economic status and education levels, and may be perpetrated by those we think of as allies! It dispels the myth that there are certain types of victims and perpetrators. It will help a lot of people, and particularly those who hesitate to identify as a victim/survivor for fear of losing their grounding both publicly and privately. -- Yasmeen Hassan, Global Executive Director, Equality Now
Selvaratnam is also author of The Big Lie: Motherhood, Feminism, and the Reality of the Biological Clock, and is an Emmy-nominated and Webby-winning Filmmaker. She has been a producer for Aubin Pictures, For Freedoms, Glamour Women of the Year, the Meteor, Planned Parenthood, and the Vision & Justice Project. Her essays have been published in the New York Times, Vogue, The Art Newspaper, SheKnows, Glamour, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and on CNN, and she has been a fellow at Yaddo and Blue Mountain Center.