ASEAN holds women's story-reading evening<\/p>\n
By Tam Notosusanto<\/p>\n
JAKARTA (JP): Inen Maskerning and Ma Paw may not seem to have
\nanything in common. After all, one is from Aceh, the other from
\nMyanmar, and they both lead quite different lives.<\/p>\n
But as their tales were told at the mezzanine foyer of the
\nASEAN Secretariat last Friday, it turned out the two women have
\nan uncanny number of similarities.<\/p>\n
Inen and Ma Paw were among the characters in eight stories
\nrecited by women from ASEAN countries in a one-night program
\ncalled An Evening of ASEAN Women's Short Stories. The event was
\npart of ASEAN Women's Month '98, an promotional event centering
\naround the ASEAN Secretariat for the month of October. The night
\nwas filled with laughter, exotic languages and one case of stage
\nfright.<\/p>\n
Ten females from school age to middle age took turns to read
\nout stories, most of which were selected from Perempuan, an
\nanthology of short stories written by female writers from the
\nASEAN countries.<\/p>\n
The readers were generally the wives or daughters of diplomats
\nand ASEAN officials and, as the evening showed, they handled
\nintonations and articulations quite admirably.<\/p>\n
The evening began with Mignon Tan reading Emergence by the
\nFilipino writer Lucila V. Hosillos. Tan, herself a Filipino, has
\nlived in Indonesia for quite some time. During the reading she
\njuggled three languages -- Hiligaynon, English and Indonesian --
\nwith equal fluency as she flipped through the pages.<\/p>\n
Through her effective rendition of Hosillos' dramatic writing,
\nshe brought the audience into a young village woman's journey of
\nself-discovery as she reflects on her life by a river bank.<\/p>\n
\"...The darkness of her mind was brightened as if by a million
\nstars, making it bright as day. A light shone into her feelings,
\nthoughts, and her whole being. Everything conspired to make her
\naware of her femininity for the very first time. This emergence
\nshining inside her now led her thoughts into a plan of
\naction....\"<\/p>\n
The program came to its most enlightening moments when Esther
\nMyint took the time to orate some cultural anecdotes before and
\nduring her reading of Zawgy's Her Spouse. This is the story that
\nfeatures Ma Paw, a simple village woman whose name literally
\nmeans \"a not-so-intelligent female.\"<\/p>\n
Through Myint's alternate takes of Burmese and English, the
\naudience came to know Ma Paw, the breadwinner who works hard
\neveryday while her husband, although kind enough to look after
\nthe children, prefers a laid-back life sitting at home doing
\nnothing.<\/p>\n
Ma Paw puts up with Ko Hsin because, after all, he is a good
\nhusband, and a religious and charitable man who once spent some
\nyears at a Buddhist monastery as an apprentice monk.<\/p>\n
The family is thrown into turmoil when one day Ko Hsin decides
\nto become a monk again, relieving himself of any work and
\nresponsibility in the process. Thereafter he spends his days
\npraying and showering anybody near him with religious preaching.<\/p>\n
This comical story concludes with Ma Paw's ingenious strategy
\nto bring her husband back to his senses, showing in the process
\nthat her name is one given in irony alone. Myint successfully
\nbrought out the sardonic charm of this little satire with her
\ncalm, unhurried reading.<\/p>\n
Ma Paw found her soul sister in Inen Maskerning, the heroine
\nof an Acehnese folk tale introduced by the youngest reader of the
\nevening, eight-year-old Zulaika Husodo. The Al-Izhar Elementary
\nSchool pupil came to the microphone dressed in smart Acehnese
\ngarb and gave a clear articulation of the village woman's tale.
\nAlthough getting a little bogged down by the English translation,
\nshe breezed through the Indonesian parts without missing a single
\nbeat.<\/p>\n
Through Husodo, the audience encountered Inen, who, very much
\nlike Ma Paw, is an industrious woman, a woman who would go an
\nextra mile to regain her family's happy life, and a woman who has
\nto cope with a husband half as industrious as she. Even though
\nthis is not a short story in a literal sense -- it was not among
\ntales selected from the Perempuan anthology -- Inen's tale is no
\nless inspiring.<\/p>\n
A mixture of ASEAN women, among them the strong, the weak, the
\nindependent and the subservient, leapt out of the fine deliveries
\nrendered.<\/p>\n
Norain Ali, a Singaporean ASEAN official, was apologetic every
\ntime she switched from English to the Indonesian version of Miao
\nHsiou's Return. \"Don't laugh at my accent,\" she continuously
\npleaded the audience.<\/p>\n
But there was nothing to apologize for in her articulate and
\nwell-read rendition of the piece, which tells of regrets and
\nmissed chances.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Indonesian author Marianne Katoppo read out her own
\nstory, A Home for Prapanca, an amusing observation of life as
\nseen through the eyes of a cat.<\/p>\n
Ratih Sanggarwati was assigned to the most stark and intense
\nselection, Nguyen Thi's The Departure, which chronicles the day-
\nto-day lives of three female Viet Cong guerrillas stationed in a
\nsecluded village. She did her job well, even though, as the
\nevening's organizer Debra Yatim later confessed, the model-cum-
\nbusinesswoman was unfamiliar to her material until the last
\nminute.<\/p>\n
The evening caught its sole case of stage fright when Netty
\nChalermpalanupap froze in front of the microphone. The young girl
\nsoftly shook as her pleading mother, Polly, coaxed her to read
\nout her part of Kamsing Srinawk's Dark Glasses. The elder
\nChalermpalanupap surrendered and told the amused audience:
\n\"Everything was OK when we rehearsed at home.\" But the show did
\ngo on as Netty's older sister, Netta, read the descriptive
\nparagraphs in English while their mother voiced the exchanges in
\nthe delightful sounds of the Thai language.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, 14-year-old Malaysian Nadira Noordin made Cynthia
\nAnton's autobiographical piece Nannan her own. The Jakarta
\nInternational School student read the piece endearingly, as if
\nshe was telling a tale of her own beloved grandmother, all the
\nway to the poignant end.<\/p>\n
\"...Her last words after she had done her cooking that morning
\nwere, 'I think I am about to change'. In fact she really did
\nchange.<\/p>\n
\"Paralysis in her body and other senses took over. Only her
\neyes were left to do the talking. I often think that both her
\neyes whispered, 'This is the transformation that I was waiting
\nfor'. Six months later Nannan broke through her cocoon and left
\nus, alighting into the bright blue sky and yonder. The gold
\nsparkle of her wings continue to fall down onto our heads....\"<\/p>\n
Although the readings were mostly flawless, it was rather hard
\nto sit through the whole program, which dragged on for two hours
\nand forty minutes. Around 20 members of the audience were left at
\nthe bitter end, down from around 45 counted at the beginning.
\nThey alone braved the lengthiness of some of the stories, made
\neven more tedious by their rendition in two or three languages.<\/p>\n
To break the monotony, Katoppo, Sanggarwati, Yatim and Enny
\nSoekamto read out a scene from N. Riantiarno's Women in
\nParliament. Although they did it well, the play's rowdy, jovial
\nnature did not go particularly well with the elegant mannerisms
\nof the short stories.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, the program was successful in bringing together
\nthe rich ASEAN palette of cultures, especially in its use of
\nprose to introduce ASEAN women to each other's heritage. One
\nmystery remained, though: the book Perempuan, which was published
\nby Yayasan Obor ten years ago and which does not contain a single
\nentry from an Indonesian writer (although the foreword was
\nwritten by Marianne Katoppo), is now out of print and was nowhere
\nto be found.<\/p>\n
According to Yatim and fellow-organizer Geni Achnas from the
\nASEAN Secretariat, no similar anthology was ever published in the
\nensuing decade. That gives the false impression that female
\nwriting in the ASEAN region died in 1988. Whatever went wrong,
\nhere's hoping programs such as this will soon rectify this
\nmisleading state of affairs.<\/p>",
"url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/asean-holds-womens-story-reading-evening-1447893297",
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