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...]
Writings
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 Reading Woman
On Reading Woman: Preface to 'Not a Muse": A World Poetry Anthology (eds. Kate Rogers & Viki Holmes) by Laksmi Pamuntjak Not muses, exactly. reminders of what survives— creation’s flames that glitter— flare. One day in 2005, on the eve of the publication of my first collection of … [Read more...]
On the Complicated Questions Around Writing About Travel
"Travel was and will always be about exclusion." Jakarta, 1994: I wanted to write a story about magic slippers that would take me anywhere. I ended up writing a novel about demonic red shoes as an adult, with more complex reasons than fulfilling my simple wish to go to Singapore, but there were … [Read more...]
Poems and Other Myths
Poems and Other Myths, a collection of spoken word poetry by women from Asia. … [Read more...]