Outspoken and in print: New RI writing

Outspoken and in print: New RI writing

Silenced Voices, New Writing From Indonesia;
Editor: Frank Steward;
Feature Editor: John McGlyn;
University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu, 2000;
268 pages;
US$16

JAKARTA (JP): More than 100 years of repressive censorship by
the state, and the equally dulling effect of self-censorship by
authors and publishers, has left much of modern Indonesian
literature stilted and sterile.

The Dutch colonial administration put laws in place
prohibiting the publication of material it deemed dangerous or
subversive. After Indonesian independence, these laws were
adopted and used enthusiastically by the Sukarno and Soeharto
administrations, the latter adding a whole host of forbidden
issues relating to ethnicity, religion and race.

"An entire generation of Indonesians has been traumatized into
becoming a society of silence and avoidance," concludes Lontar
editor John McGlynn in an essay in Silenced Voices, subtitled New
Writing from Indonesia, the latest edition of the literary
journal Manoa.

The common thread linking the essays, fiction, drama,
interviews and poetry chosen for the journal, much of which has
been published or translated for the first time, is
outspokenness. This is what makes for such refreshing reading.

Javanese/Indonesian reticence is conspicuous by its absence,
here replaced by voices that are not afraid to tell things as
they are, or, in the case of much of the material, as they were
during the New Order regime. In almost triumphant fashion, taboo
topics including religion, sex, communism and state brutality,
are given a much-needed and long-awaited airing.

In his autobiographical essay Between The Bars, Hersri
Setiawan, a writer first imprisoned and eventually forced into
exile in the Netherlands by the New Order, provocatively declares
himself an abangan (believing in God but not in any organized
religion), a belief not recognized by the New Order. Starting
with his experiences at school and continuing in prison on Buru
island, he demonstrates the absurdity of a regime that offers its
citizens a "nonnegotiable option to believe" and the way the New
Order used religion in general to control its subjects.

Female activist and long-term political prisoner Sujinah
writes three of the most uncompromising tales. She recorded in
jail first-person accounts of events leading up to the
imprisonment of three women: Nunung, a victim of domestic abuse
cornered into murdering her husband; Sri, tricked into
prostitution, out of which she escapes only to be arrested by
policemen working on the orders of her ex-pimp; and Keling, born
under a bridge over the Ciliwung river into a life of pick
pocketing and petty crime.

Gritty, dirty realism characterizes the telling of their
stories. Sri, head shaven as a punishment for attempting suicide,
reflects on her life: "So here I am, a bald whore with scars on
her wrists, dying of syphilis." In contrast to the others, her
story at least contains a small ray of hope when she meets a
religious prison doctor, who neither condemns nor reminds her of
the punishment God is lining up for her after death.

That the case of Marsinah, a factory worker raped and killed
in 1993 after organizing labor protests, remains unforgotten is
due in part to the efforts of playwright Ratna Sarumpaet. One of
her works, entitled Marsinah Accuses, is included in the
collection. Marsinah herself speaks to the audience and the
narrative is interspersed with harrowing descriptions of her
suffering. She accuses not only her murderers and the regime that
nurtured them, but opposition MPs, the audience and God for the
miserable state of her life and the brutality of her death. Even
on the printed page, the work's power as a piece of drama
resonates.

More established literary and intellectual heavyweights are
also represented. Goenawan Mohammad contributes an opera, based
on a 12th century Javanese story. An episode from Seno Gumira
Ajidrama's novel Jazz, Parfum dan Insiden (1996) refers to the
September 1994 Massacre in Dili's Santa Cruz cemetery through
implicit references, which is a common technique of avoiding the
censor's attentions in repressive regimes. There is also a
lengthy interview with Pramoedya Ananta Toer's American editor.

Bringing things up to date, the final section of Ayu Utami's
best-selling novel Saman (1998) is included here. The novel as a
whole explores sexual infidelity, lust and religious conviction
against a backdrop of political activism in the mid-1990s. We get
the novel's closing e-mail exchange between ex-priest, political
exile Saman and his married lover in Jakarta, which ends with an
explicit, erotic scene in the Garden of Eden. Great stuff, and
presumably included not just for its mold-breaking properties but
also as a sign of what we can hope for in the future.

Twelve of the pieces in the journal are from or about
Indonesia. The rest of the space is filled with book reviews,
Chinese, Samoan and Japanese writing and a diverting symposium on
the art of translating poetry. If at times the symposium
contributors are a little self-important -- one of them contends
that the translator of poetry must be "an historian, a linguist,
a magician, a composer, an intuitionist, a lover, and a midwife"
-- by way of compensation we get a handful of short Zen-flavored
Japanese and Chinese poems first popularized in the West by the
Beats, one of whom, Gary Snyder, also makes a contribution to the
symposium.

The writing in Manoa is almost without exception thoughtful
and thought provoking and never loses sight of what literature is
and is about: human experience and emotions translated into
language. Which, something the collection as a whole serves to
remind us, is no business of the state whatsoever.

-- Chris Brummit