My Pain, My Country: New novel seeks to bring nuance to 1998 Jakarta riots, Chinese diaspora

"I got the impression that people living outside of Indonesia, even in Australia, did not understand the 1998 riots properly," author Dewi Anggraeni says, reflecting on why she wrote her latest novel which tells the story of a Chinese-Indonesian woman caught up in the violent protests that led to President Suharto's fall. The 276-page novel — My Pain, My Country — was written and published in English, and looking back at the chaotic events some 20 years later, it seeks to bring cultural nuance to the anti-government protests in which the Chinese community was also specifically targeted, their houses burned down, and many women reportedly gangraped.