For me, it was important to talk about everyone's story and experience with the term “motherhood”. In Birth Canal, Dias Novita Wuri masterfully braids disparate storylines of women across various countries and time periods to track the shifting contexts of sexuality, femininity, family, and gender … [Read more...]
Michelle Kadarusman’s middle-grade novel Berani is an inspiring introduction to environmental activism
December 31, 2023 by
'I'd really like to impart to my readers in the middle grade to believe that you can make a difference.' Michelle Kadarusman says writing for middle-grade is where she has found her voice. The Canadian Australian Indonesian author's novels have a compelling way of unraveling complex world issues … [Read more...]
Norman Erikson Pasaribu’s Portrait of Gay Indonesia
December 30, 2023 by
In, Happy Stories, Mostly, a collection of short stories, the complexities of queer life in the Southeast Asian country come into focus. Happy endings (or beginnings) don’t make for good fiction, as the Indonesian writer Norman Erikson Pasaribu knows well. But Pasaribu doesn’t want to give … [Read more...]
Lacan’s concept of objet petit a in “Gadis Kretek”
December 26, 2023 by
I recently caught a new Indonesian series titled “Gadis Kretek”, or “Cigarette Girl”, premiered in Netflix. It’s set in 1960s Indonesia, and the historical backdrop piqued my interest. The series revolves around themes of womanhood in Indonesia, freedom, Indonesia’s darkest history in the 1960s and … [Read more...]
A part of history
December 14, 2023 by
When Inside Indonesia was launched in November 1983, the events of 1965/66 were still fresh in the Indonesian nation’s collective memory. The official interpretation of those events – that the Army had foiled an attempted coup by the Indonesian communist party (PKI) and its supporters, incarcerating … [Read more...]
