An outsider looking in
The daughter of a diplomat in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Julia I. Suryakusuma spent part of her youth in the various places of her father's postings.
She was born in India in 1954, and subsequently lived in Hungary (1961-63), England (1969-1973) and Italy (1969-1973). As a diplomat's daughter, she was always a foreigner abroad, but she was also considered a stranger in her own country.
Being different was an intrinsic part of her upbringing.
"I was always foreign, and therefore marginal," she said, adding it was a position she used to her advantage as an "insider/outsider, Eastern/Western, scholar/activist, rebel traditionalist, and also a dreamer/idealist-realist".
"I have felt discriminated ever since I was a kid," she said in revealing her path toward her famously upfront feminism. It did not bog her down, but rather made her stronger.
I was made to be a feminist, she said, noting that she used to disobey her mother when requested to peel the mango for her brother. She also opposed her father when he thought a secretarial course would be good enough for her; at age 13, she insisted on a normal, regular schooling.
She was intent on showing that she was at least as good as a any boy.
She excelled in school, even jumped class in Italy, reading books like Jean Paul Sartre's at an age when others were reading romance novels. "Hell is other people", as Sartre once said, is among her favorite quotes.
Julia has felt hurt and disregarded by other people. She says the most painful experience was when Unesco "snatched" her project of the Women's Film Festival, which she conceived and brought to life in 1996.
She made her debut as a writer at age 18, in the field of literary criticism on Iwan Simatupang's Merahnya Merah. It won an award from the Jakarta Arts Council that thrust her into the world of artists.
It was here she met filmmaker Ami Priyono, whom she married after six months, the man she calls her intellectual partner and counterpart.
Julia studied at the University of Indonesia's School of Psychology (1974-1976), but dropped out to obtain a BSc Honors in Sociology at the London City University, where she studied from 1976-1979. Years later she went to The Hague to study at the Institute of Social Studies where she did her master's in the Politics of Developing Societies with her groundbreaking State Ibuism thesis on oppressive gender structures of the state.
An activist of sorts, she is foremost a feminist in the widest sense of the word, a person of interdisciplinary significance. As such she is involved in multifarious actions, one of which was the setting up of the Almanac of Indonesian Politics (API) Foundation, which produced the Indonesian Almanac of Political Parties (1999), and The Indonesian Parliament Guide (1999-2004).
At 50 and widowed, Julia says she wants to slow down, write novels and immerse herself in culture. But friends urge her to continue writing her eye-opening critiques, her often witty columns and her exemplifying reflections.
-- Carla Bianpoen