Essays on Umar Kayam, an Indonesian writer.

Collective biography of prominent people in Indonesia.

This collective volume contains articles in honour of Professor A. Teeuw.

Mayasari-Hoffert examines the depiction of the Left in Indonesian literature since the anti-leftist purge in 1965. With close textual analysis of Indonesian literary texts and their political context, this book investigates how the New Order regime under Suharto was able to build a metanarrative of liberation while purging the Left in Indonesia. Even after the regime’s end in 1998, many Indonesians still have an ingrained fear of the prospect of Communism, with the result being that literary representation of the Left is still seen as problematic. Through reviewing Indonesia’s institution of literature, the use and abuse of universal humanism under the New Order regime is examined, and the ways in which power intersects with literature is explored. An informative read for scholars and students of Indonesian politics, literature, and the cultural cold war.

In this article, the author attempts to demonstrate that the study of inland fisheries can provide additional insight into the culture of the Meybrat, a tribal community living around the Ayamaru lakes in the northern part of the Western Bird's Head of Irian Jaya. The author discusses the following: the significance of pusaka (sacred hereditary goods) in fishery; the role of ancestor worship and cosmology; the rise of a class of native immigrant 'big men' such as 'bankers' in ikat textiles (kain timur); the role of imported kain pusaka as part of the so-called kain timur-complex; newly discovered aspects of myths from the western and eastern Bird's Head, that are often culturally imposed.

Born in Ngawi, East Java, in 1932, Umar Kayam obtained his masters degree from New York University and his doctoral degree from Cornell University. It was there, in New York, where he began to hone his literary skills. The publication of his first collection of short stories, A Thousand Fireflies in Manhattan, in 1972, gained him national fame as a short story writer. The light and semi-ironic tone of Kayam's "New York stories," in which the author viewed an archetypal cast of New York characters through the lens of a nai ve Indonesian outsider vanished completely in the next phase of the author's career when he dealt with the impact of the incarceration and killings of hundreds of thousands of Communists or alleged Communists that took place after the rise of Soeharto's militaristic regime. Kayam's highly nuanced portraits of the innocent victims of "1965" again earned him critical acclaim. Kayam was a regular contributor to the literary column of "Kompas," the nation's largest newspaper, and during the third and final stage of the author's literary career, it became an almost annual event for him to contribute a story about Lebaran, the holiday that marks the end of the Muslim month of fasting, a time when millions of Indonesians who have moved from the communities where they were born attempt against numerous odds to return home. The stories produced by Kayam during the three stages of his literary career vary greatly in subject matter and tone. What binds them together is that in each and every one, one hears is the voice of the common man.

On art and cultural studies in Indonesia.