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