From above, Buru looks like a fairy tale isle washed by the Banda and Seram seas. At ground level, the third-largest island in the Maluku archipelago located 2,230 kilometers northeast of Jakarta supports the aerial image. Settlements are small, roads uncrowded, a lush landscape dominated by Mount … [Read more...]
Winternachten literary festival and the art of decolonization
February 5, 2020 by
Former Dutch colonies are the focus at Winternachten in The Hague, one of the Netherlands’ biggest literary festivals. “Again, your excellency, we are in 1939, and just as your parliament expressed expectations that it would take at least another century before Indonesians are ready for … [Read more...]
Discovering Indonesian-Dutch connection through poetry
February 2, 2020 by
Robin Block and Angelina Enny have co-written a poetry collection about shared Dutch-Indonesian history. Before the Dutch colonial era ended in the 1940s, Indonesians and Dutch settlers lived alongside each other for hundreds of years. Yet how much do Indonesians and Dutch people really know about … [Read more...]
Magical double
January 30, 2020 by
"My Lipstick Is Red, Darling”, from Eka Kurniawan’s new collection of short stories, Kitchen Curse, begins with a woman’s arrest at a brothel. She tells the police she is merely a housewife, not a prostitute, but her husband asks for a divorce when she finally gets home. The pages that follow delve … [Read more...]
Tiffany Tsao: Giving outsiders a voice
January 26, 2020 by
Growing up, Tiffany Tsao was never in one place long enough to call it home. Her nomadic upbringing had her and her family living in the United States, Singapore and Indonesia and being an American citizen of Indonesian-Chinese descent, she not only found it difficult to establish a physical home, … [Read more...]
