“She dreamt she saw her mother chewing a quid of betel. As she chewed, spittle spurted from her lips and dribbled down her pure white dress, spattering it with blood-red stains. There was something almost sinister about her mother’s behavior, chewing betel and looking about with a wild, hungry … [Read more...]
Unfinished Nation
June 30, 2023 by
Unfinished Nation traces the evolution of Indonesia from its anti-colonial stirrings in the early twentieth century to the lengthy, and eventually victorious, struggle against the dictatorship of President Suharto. In clarifying the often misunderstood political changes that took place in Indonesia … [Read more...]
Indonesia Out of Exile
February 8, 2023 by
In 1981, a new company, Hasta Mitra, founded by three men just released from over a decade in prison, published a novel written in a prison camp by Pramoedya Ananta Toer. The novel was This Earth of Mankind. It told the story of the early gestation of the Indonesian national awakening. The … [Read more...]
The Development of Modern Indonesian Poetry
July 29, 2018 by
Indonesian poetry, like the country and also the language, is basically a product of this century. Only in the twentieth century have the people of this vast archipelago begun to achieve a unified cultural identity and national spirit; only since 1928 has the possibility, and by now the reality, of … [Read more...]