“if you do not speak english, you may not be able to survive it is sink or swim.” in sixth grade, i stood under a boil of a sun at our school assembly, speaker warning us of Globalisation Incoming, of others waiting at the wings to swoop up money, pure job-snatching; sit on a panel in 2017 on … [Read more...]
Writings
My Broken English Isn’t an Excuse for Your Disrespect
Jesse Q. Sutanto, author of the hotly anticipated murder rom-com Dial A for Aunties, explains the power of using broken languages in her novels. have a confession to make: I prefer writing in present tense because I don’t really know my tenses. I did learn English when I moved to Singapore at the … [Read more...]
My Mother’s Pain
In my Chinese Indonesian family, massage has been the sole consistent method to work through pain, to recover our sense of choice. My massage training began when I was 4 years old. On Sundays after church, my father would lie belly-down, head hanging off the side of the bed, while my mother … [Read more...]
On Goenawan Mohamad’s Poems
“Every poet has a twilight in his soul,” said Derek Walcott, and this is especially true of Indonesian poet and essayist Goenawan Mohamad. Most of his poems are haunting, elusive, sensually morbid or morbidly pessimistic: a fugitive’s corpus, bred by the spirit of escape and guided only by “the … [Read more...]
On Homecoming (and Leaving), Jakarta to New York
Scenario 1 I land in Jakarta just in time for Chinese New Year. I can smell the cigarette smoke and rain before the plane even touches the tarmac; my body retrieves memories faster than my mind can process them. I move through Arrivals in an easy forward motion: smile as the immigration … [Read more...]
