January 2009
This month we present women writers from the vast and sprawling islands of Indonesia. Straddling the equator and featuring both dense urban centers and expansive wilderness, rich natural resources and grinding poverty, the vibrant archipelago’s ethnic diversity, religious pluralism, and twin histories of colonialism and rebellion inform its literary culture as well. In narratives as varied as the islands themselves, women embark on personal and professional journeys, navigating the treacherous depths of families, society, and faith to write their own stories of travel and discovery. Listen as Nenden Lilis A., Abidah El Khalieqy, Lily Yulianti Farid, Reda Gaudiamo, Dorothea Rosa Herliany, Etik Juwita, Oka Rusmini, and Cok Sawitri tell their own tales of the South Pacific. We thank our guest editors, John H. McGlynn and Dorothea Rosa Herliany, and their staff at the Lontar Foundation, particularly Dewi Andahlia.
All photos except statue by Jonathan McIntosh, 2004
Maybe Not Yem
Etik Juwita’s guest worker is terrorized all the way home
Translated by Andy Fuller
“I put rat poison in the milk for my boss’s kid,” she said.
The Kitchen
Lily Yulianti Farid’s girl sees her cooking mother cater to the government
Translated by John H. McGlynn
Every day was a new menu.
Road to Heaven
Abidah El Khalieqy’s abused wife lives for the afterlife
Translated by John H. McGlynn
When my mother died, her face changed.
Cik Giok
Reda Gaudiamo’s young bride learns a family secret
Translated by John H. McGlynn
Cik Giok had lived with our family a long time.
The Rooms Out Back
Nenden Lilis A.’s couple can’t escape their battling neighbors
Translated by John H. McGlynn
For them, talking is screaming.
The Century Carver
Oka Rusmini’s blind woodworker carves out the aesthetics of desire
Translated by Pamela Allen
She was timber of exquisite beauty.
Snatch
Horacio Castellanos Moya on a romantic robbery
Translated by Samantha Schnee
I saw they were engaged in an intense conversation.
Bare Nothing
Gabriel Magaña sees a poetic penumbra
Translated by Suzanne Jill Levine
The graveyard of words.
The Taker and Other Stories by Rubem Fonseca 
Rage quickens the pulse of all these stories.
Chicago by Alaa Al Aswany 
Histology—the microscopic study of cross-sections of biological tissues—offers a fitting analogy for Al Aswany’s narrative technique.