Despite having heard her name in Indonesian literary world for quite long, I never read any of Ratih Kumala’s works until just recently. Bastian dan Jamur Ajaib is not her first book, but it was the first ever that dropped into my lap. Freshly published in 2015, it is a collection of thirteen short … [Read more...]

There is always stigma about women, there are always names―bitch, witch; and even when people point their finger at a man and curse him they will say “son of a bitch”, son of a female dog. In our culture there are not only a few myths and ghost stories filled with female spirits depicted in every … [Read more...]

To be or not to be happy? That is certainly not the question. The soon-to-be-published in America short story collection Happy Stories, Mostly (2021) expresses an LGBTQ+ person’s limited accessibility to happiness in a world plagued with acute heteronormativity. Author Norman Erikson … [Read more...]

The days are getting longer and spring is in the air. Admittedly with such a strange and unsatisfying New England winter, I have been yearning for spring for a while, so it’s a relief to finally have the weather changing and the flowers coming up. And of course there are the spring 2023 new releases … [Read more...]

In intimate detail, Indonesian writer Pasaribu’s debut collection explores the way colonial violence and anti-queer prejudice permeate contemporary culture. Looking through a queer lens, the reader is invited to witness the psychic damage done by heteronormativity and homophobia. As hinted in the … [Read more...]