Essay

A new documentary is inventive, but will not help Indonesia get to the truth of the 1965 killings. The Act of Killing, a new documentary on Indonesia’s anti-Communist mass killings, is making the rounds globally and earning praise for its innovative cinematography. Innovative it may be, but the … [Read more...]

If there is one Indonesian word you know, it’s probably amok. As in children dressing in Halloween costumes and running amuck, amuck, amuck (that’s a quote from the 1993 movie Hocus Pocus). The original connotation isn’t cute, though. It’s not playful. It’s an episode of frenzied violence, a sudden … [Read more...]

I have never read anything written by Pearl S. Buck. But a few years ago, I came across something she once said that I have been unable to forget. In a 1958 interview on the American TV show The Mike Wallace Interview, the eponymous Wallace (pausing every now and then to plug Parliament-brand … [Read more...]

Affan Kurniawan, a twenty-one-year-old motorcycle taxi rider, was working in Jakarta when he was struck by an armoured vehicle belonging to the Mobile Brigade Corps, an elite unit of the Indonesian National Police. The vehicle, weighing several tons, didn’t even try to avoid him; footage that … [Read more...]

This essay is based on a Master’s lecture delivered at the Conrad Award Gala, Conrad Festival, October 29, 2023. Gloria Anzaldúa, a queer Mexican American author with indigenous heritage, tells us about why she writes: “I write to record what others erase when I speak, to rewrite the stories … [Read more...]