Violet and I had our own language. She was the belle of the entire school and I was the overly emaciated girl everyone loved to mock. I was very bony and tall and the boys at school kept telling me I'd make a great pretzel stick. I didn't like to eat - food made me nauseous - so I had to drink … [Read more...]
Writings
Why Are Indonesians Being Erased from Indonesian Literature?
What we lose when Indonesian writing is evaluated according to Anglophone preferences. When I entered the world of Indonesian literary translation several years ago, I was blissfully unaware of how dysfunctional it was. (Nor did I suspect that I would eventually become so troubled by its … [Read more...]
Why I Wrote a Novel About Indonesian Political Exiles
‘For me, who grew up and became an adult during the New Order period, I was conscious of a historical and political absurdity. I began to feel that there were some Indonesians who had become invisible.’ The year was 1988 and I had traveled to Paris on my way back home to Jakarta after graduating … [Read more...]
Why using English doesn’t make me any less Indonesian
I was 12 when I read my first Harry Potter book. I had just finished watching the Prisoner of Azkaban and I couldn’t wait to know what would happen next. So I bought the Indonesian translation of the Goblet of Fire. I still remember reading it at midnight in bed, under my blanket with a … [Read more...]
Xu Xi on Living the Transnational Literary Life
“Life really isn’t stranger than fiction, but you have to keep reading, and rereading, to know that.” A Clean, Well-Lighted Place He disliked bars and bodegas. A clean, well-lighted café was a very different thing. They generally were clean, and lighted, though not necessarily well, the … [Read more...]