Preservation of Chinese-Malay literature in crisis

Preservation of Chinese-Malay literature in crisis

Evi Mariani, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

Much too often, the path of noble intention is a bumpy road.

This is certainly the case for Jakarta publishing company
Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia (KPG), which since 1997, with the
help of Chinese-Malay literature experts Myra Sidharta and Marcus
A.S., has been trying to preserve hundreds of titles of Chinese-
Malay literature.

With plans to publish a total of 25 volumes in a series --
Kesastraan Melayu Tionghoa dan Kebangsaaan Indonesia (Chinese-
Malay Literature and Indonesia's Nationhood) -- KPG launched its
first book in 2000, receiving assistance from the Ford Foundation
and the Adikarya IKAPI Foundation.

"We printed 3,000 copies of the first volume," Pax Benedanto,
the series' first editor, told The Jakarta Post.

Later in the same year, KPG printed 3,000 copies of volume No.
2, this time without assistance from outside institutions.

"But after the sixth volume, we experienced a large return of
(unsold) copies (from booksellers)," Paz said.

So, KPG, with 250 registered literature fans, decided to print
only 2,000 copies of the eighth volume last year. The dwindling
interest meant that this year's ninth edition will only number a
thousand. Lack of demand meant the company has also slowed down
its publishing pace, from two volumes a year to one, meaning that
the project is not scheduled to finish until 2021.

However, despite the slow sales and the increasing age of
their readership -- Pax says most of the books' buyers are over
50 -- KPG's aim has always been more about preservation than
hitting the best-seller lists.

"We just wanted to preserve Chinese-Malay literature, which
had gained less than its justified recognition," Pax said.

In the introduction to each volume of the book, KPG cites data
on Chinese-Malay literature from French researcher Claudine
Salmon.

Salmon, in her book Le moment 'Sino-Malais' de la litterature
Indonesienne (Literature in Malay by the Chinese of Indonesia),
records that the Chinese-Malay period of 1870-1960 produced 3,005
works involving 806 authors.

Indonesian literature expert A. Teeuw, meanwhile, records that
within the first 50 years of Indonesian literature (for the
period 1918-1967), there were 175 recorded writers and 400 works.

KPG also notes foreign researcher, C.W. Watson, who in 1971
claimed that Chinese-Malay literature was the antecedent of
modern Indonesian literature.

Many histories of Indonesia's modern literature mark 1918 as
the year of its birth, the year that publisher Balai Pustaka set
up a special editorial board to promote and encourage writing by
Indonesians, which also included Chinese-Indonesian writers.

However, by 1962, the year when Indonesia's Chinese population
were ordered to choose between Chinese and Indonesian
citizenship, a literature observer, Nio Joe Lan, wrote an
"obituary" for Chinese-Malay literature.

"Under Indonesian law, Chinese-Indonesians could no longer
exist because they had either become Indonesian or Chinese
according to their own choice," Nio said.

"According to Nio, literature written by Chinese-Indonesians
using the colloquial (Malay) language would never be written
again," Myra Sidharta wrote in an introduction of Kesastraan
Volume 1.

Myra said that in the 1960s, Chinese-Malay literature began
fading away, the reason for KPG deciding to publish 125 of its
3,000 recorded stories.

"We obtained most of the manuscripts from Myra Sidharta, who
has an extensive collection of this literature," Pax said.

"We still hope we can complete all the planned 25 volumes."

However, he says, without increased interest from literature
readers, libraries and universities, KPG will have to write an
"obituary" for their preservation effort, halfway along the bumpy
road.