Chinese Indonesian Millennials: Literary and Popular Expressions

Chinese Indonesian Millennials: Literary and Popular Expressions

Chinese Indonesians were known for their literary contribution during the pre-colonial era through their publishing and writing of dime novels and popular magazines, written in colloquial Malay. After Indonesian independence, their voice had been subdued, especially after the 1965 anti-communist cleansing and the imposition of the New Order assimilation policy. In the aftermath of the 1998 Reformasi movement, however, there has been a surge of new expressions of Chinese Indonesians in literature and the popular media. The presentation will focus on Chinese Indonesian writers born after 1980s, who besides publishing fiction and non fiction, also use various digital platform to express their perspectives. Among the Chinese Indonesian millennials discussed here are Hanna Fransisca (poet and fiction writer), Margie Astaman (blog writer), Sylvie Tanaga (insta-story writer), Ivan Chen (video game creator), Anne Shakka (memoir writer) and Ernest (stand-up comedian). Compared to the subdued and apologetic tone of the older Chinese writers, these young writers confront their Chineseness shamelessly and with forward looking trajectory and self confidence. The presentation will ground their literary and popular expressions in two significant historical moments for Chinese Indonesians, namely the 1998 Reformasi and the controversial case of the jailed Chinese governor, Ahok. We will also examine the way these writers, through their various media, construct collective memory and reposition Chineseness for the Indonesian generations after them. .

Melani Budianta, is a professor in literature and cultural studies at the Universitas Indonesia. She got her BA at the English Studies Program, UI, and MA in American Studies at the University of Southern California, and Ph.D. in English from Cornell University. She serves as member of
editorial collective in a number of academic journals, including Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Jurnal Wacana (FIBUI), Wacana Seni (Malaysia), Indian Journal of Gender Studies. She has served as selection committee member in Arryman Fellowship, Asian Public Intellectual, SEASREP, and EUROSEAS Book Prize 2015, a research fellow at Asia Research Institute (2010), KITLV (2011), a visiting lecturer at Kyoto University (2016) dan University of Naples d’Orientale
(2018). Her publications include An Ocean of Becoming, Literature from the Indonesian Archipelago (editor, with Manneke Budiman), Jakarta, Lontar Foundation, 2017, Indonesian Women Writers, (editor, with Yvonne Michalik), Regiospectra Verlag, 2015. Among her published articles are “Hijacking Shakespeare: Indonesian Faces of Julius Caesar” in Shakespeare’s Asian Journey, Critical Encounters, Cultural Geographies, and the Politics of Travel, (eds. Bi-qi Beatrice Lei, Judy Celine Ick, and Poetnam Trivedi, New York: Routledge, 2017); “Beyond Multiculturalism: Redefining Nationhood in a Globalized Age, “ Naam-Kok, Kim (ed), Multiculturalism and Challenges of Demoratization in Europe and Asia, Ashgate, 2014.

Shuri Mariasih Gietty Tambunan is a lecturer, specializing in Cultural Studies, in the Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia. She completed her PhD in the Department of Cultural Studies, Lingnan University, Hong Kong, in 2013. Her research focus in on transnational flow of East Asian popular culture products in Indonesia within the context of cultural globalization. Her other research areas are on culinary (cultural) practices and social media. She received her Master’s Degrees in Cultural Studies from the Universitas Indonesia (2007) and the University of Groningen, the Netherlands (2010). Some of her publications include “Imaginary ‘Asia’: Indonesian Audience’s Reflexivity on Korean Television Dramas,” in an edited volume entitled Korean Wave in Southeast Asia: Consumption and Production (2014). Her other publications are: “Positive body image activism in collective (@effyourbeautystandards) and personal (@yourstruelymelly) Instagram accounts: Challenging American idealized beauty construction” (2018 as a co-author); “Problematizing sexualized female images and Donald Trumps’
immigration stance in video games: An analysis of Let’s Play videos on YouTube” (2018 as a co-author); “Shaming the Other Woman (pelakor): Female Catfight as a Spectacle in Social Media” (2018) and “Social Media, Humour and Empowerment: The Power of “Emak-Emak” and #fallingstar2018 Challenge in Instagram” (2018). She is also an editor for an edited volume to be published in 2020 by Springer (Projecting Identity and Voices of Minorities).