Dewi Anggraeni's 'Neighbourhood Tales' opens doors

Dewi Anggraeni's 'Neighbourhood Tales' opens doors

Neighbourhood Tales; By Dewi Anggraeni; Indra Publishing,
Melbourne, 2001; ISBN 095858057X; AU$24.95.

GEELONG, Victoria (JP): During the sometimes troubled history
of relations between Indonesia and Australia, it has been
suggested that the two countries are simply too far apart to
ever really understand each other. From this mutual lack of
understanding, it is said, arises the potential for disagreement
and even conflict.

But Dewi Anggraeni's new book Neighbourhood Tales gives lie to
this notion, easily and often gracefully traversing between the
two worlds, or world views.

The author is not writing about political issues, or even
culture in a direct sense. Rather she has constructed a series of
short stories that bring the people of one culture into the world
of another, very often in what might be term "blended"
circumstances.

The stories of Neighbourhood Tales were written in either
English or Indonesian, and then translated into the other
language, to provide a complete set of each. One would require
more sensitive cultural radar than mine to detect which was
written in what language first, reflecting the familiarity with
which the author travels between her worlds.

One might assume, as a bicultural exercise, that Dewi
Anggraeni is focused on the cultural context. She is, however,
first and foremost a story teller, a writer whose appreciation of
life's nuances touches on deeper meanings we all share.

Although there are culturally specific references, the implied
sharing of a common humanity transcends those cultural
difference. Where such difference is highlighted, if is
often done so for comic effect, for example in the story 'Halal'.

In one sense, such "blending" reflects Dewi Anggraeni's own
experience, being born and raised in West Java but having lived
with an Australian partner in Australia for 30 years. The author
has said that she feels a part of both cultures, and it shows
in her understanding. However, while both cultures sit side by
side, the author is careful not to compare them. Rather, like
herself, she shows how they can and often do harmoniously co-
exist.

The author clearly likes Australia, or those parts of it that
Australians might like, and she is comfortable with its
subtleties. Her fictional visit to Melbourne's bushy outer suburb
of Eltham, for example, immediately invoked my own distant
memories of that place, so true was her touch. The author
similarly continues to inhabit and portray an Indonesian world,
in both a literal and figurative sense.

More than the physical surroundings, there are continuous
references to the types of feelings and ideas that contribute to
the world view of many Indonesians.

Perhaps in part because of the convincing story telling style
this does not seem, to an Australian, as unfamiliar as it
potentially might.

In particular, throughout Neighbourhood Tales there is a
strong emphasis on a traditional Indonesian engagement with the
spiritual. At one level this echoes the more distant past of much
of Australian society, of which there is a social memory.

At another level it reflects how this element of the informal
unknown has become standardized in the West at the generic "ghost
story'. Unlike the two-dimensional "ghost story", though, like
her more temporal characters this spiritual element is infused
with life.

Life is also pronounced in the opening story Music for
Libretto/Komposisi buat Libreto. The protagonist is an Indonesian
composer visiting Australia seeking escape from a troubled
marriage and toward musical inspiration. Although the sexual
urgency of this story is not repeated, it does reflect a
remarkably common (and cross cultural) theme. So too does Eleven
Year Slip/Tergelincir Dalam Cobaan where an infidelity tests a
marriage, and in the gentler cross-cultural longings
of The Heirloom/Keris Pusaka.

While the book opens doors for Australians (and other
Westerners) to Indonesia, also for an Indonesian audience
Neighbourhood Tales opens doors to Australian life,
through both Australian and Indonesian characters, and shows that
while respective lives are different they are perhaps less
different than is sometimes claimed.

Dewi Anggraeni's Neighbourhood Tales works well as simple
storytelling, and in providing glimpses of deeper truths. And it
does that in a way that should not only be satisfying to
audiences from both Australia and Indonesia, but also as
a signifier for how so much suspicion between the peoples of the
two countries has been and remains unnecessary.

-- Damien Kingsbury

The reviewer, Damien Kingsbury, is a professor at Deakins
University.