Birth Canal

The Jakarta sky “had a rosy nuance that somehow seemed both warm and sad, like a freshly slapped cheek” the day a stranger, a photographer, told Nastiti that she was incredibly beautiful and took her picture. She enjoys a moment of glamour when the photo appears in a trendy exhibition and in a national newspaper covering it – and then, she makes herself disappear. As the narrative of Dias Novita Wuri’s novella Birth Canal shifts its focus from Nastiti to her mother and grandmother, we begin to understand the different ways women can vanish when they are seen by men, and how war and sexual violence continue to inflict their wounds through the generations – and collaterally.