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.