Tari Lang seemed to live in parallel universes. She was born to an English mother and an Indonesian father. Both of her parents enjoyed higher education, and they met in Prague, when the city was a magnet for leftist intellectuals pursuing their studies. Tari spent her childhood in the elite Menteng … [Read more...]
Cultural Context, Joy, and Community: Lunar Boy and the Realities of Queer Experience in the Global South
September 2, 2026 by
“Anyone who imagines a different reality is helping everyone else to see our power to act, and to make changes.” —Never Say You Can’t Survive by Charlie Jane Anders Growing up as a queer person in Indonesia meant continually starving for representation. It’s only within the past years that … [Read more...]
Review: On fascism and the book
August 22, 2026 by
I laughed when I reached the pages on Franz Magnis-Suseno. Then the laugh died in my throat. There is something frightening beneath the comedy. Here is the story. In Makassar, in August 2019 police and vigilantes in religious dress seized two books by Magnis-Suseno, Pemikiran Karl Marx (Karl … [Read more...]
Remembering is a political act
August 11, 2026 by
Back when I was a kid in the 1980s, Jakarta was a crowded city of organised chaos, somewhere between sprawling village and budding metropolis. Bicycle rickshaws operated in the shadows of nascent skyscrapers. Homes were lit by fluorescent bulbs but street vendors still hung kerosene lamps out for … [Read more...]
