Frankfurt Book Fair: The future lies in the hands of women – Times Online

This year, Indonesia is the host country at the Frankfurt Book Fair. However, although the island nation is one of the most populous countries in the world, the literary scene is little known internationally. And although there are more than 1,000 publishers in Indonesia, only 267 works have been translated into English and only a few in German. Among the best known authors heard of died in 2006 Pramoedya Ananta Toer. When he stood for many years during the Suharto dictatorship under house arrest, visited him Günter Grass and became his friend.

Since the fall of the dictator in 1998. Women now have increasingly conquered the literary scene. “The Future of Indonesia’s novel lies in the hands of women,” says the poet and literature professor Sapardi Djoko Damono commented on the fact that almost all the authors win prestigious literary awards in the country.

About” 8:10 “

Women now also in the evening , In future 8:10 instead of the current 7:50 . Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays. Politically, poetic polemic.

We, the editors of 8:10, are a versatile and changeable authors collective. We find that our society needs more female voices in public. We think that these voices should be divers. We represent any ideology and disagree. But we believe feminism is important, because justice in society concerns us all. We want to share with our readers. And with our guest authors.

Here are all the texts that appear 8:10 .

About the Authors

The editors of 8:10 consists of:

Ulrike Demmer , journalist
Marion Detjen , a contemporary historian
Hella Dietz , a sociologist
Heike-Melba Fendel , author and owner of the artist and event agency Barbarella Entertainment
Annett Gröschner , a freelance writer
Masha Jacobs , journalist, editor of the journal Pop. Culture and criticism.
Stefanie Lohaus , journalist, editor of the Missy Magazine
Lina Muzur , Program Director the structure publishing
Catherine Newmark , a cultural journalist
Annika Reich , writer
Elisabeth Weller House , journalist

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Allow the popular country Writers be roughly divided into the camp of the secular and Islamic literature. The secular literature is often called “Sastrawangi”, as “fragrance literature” means, but also as a “chick-lit” or “Teen-lit”. The term “Sastrawangi” refers mainly to the appearance and the appearance of the authors, which are so regularly attacked in the public personally. They are accused of wanting with their provocative topics only increase their own popularity and to enrich themselves.

unprecedented openness

For Ayu Utami, one of the most famous writers of the secular camp, misunderstands the term “Sastrawangi” However, the literary and sociopolitical quality of their works. In her first novel, Saman (1998) she sits in a hitherto unknown openness with taboo subjects such as sexuality and political violence apart. Permissive depictions of sexual fantasies and desires form the framework of the novel. The heroines of Saman are emancipated to talk openly about their relationships with men, their sexual needs and deny the traditional role assignments. But Ayu Utami theme in this novel also torture, conflicts between Muslims and Christians and the mass murders during the Suharto era. The novel has sold more than 100,000 copies in Indonesia and translated into several languages.

Ayu Utami in many ways exemplary of the writers of the secular direction that have almost all a journalistic and political background. Ayu Utamis family belonged to the first generation of Catholics on Java, the father was a lawyer, his mother a teacher. In 1990 she wins a student a beauty contest, but opts for a model career and for a career in journalism. First, she writes anonymously about corruption in the Suharto regime. From the closure of three news magazines by Suharto is directly affected. “After a protest against censorship of the government, I have been laid off and was on a blacklist because I as a journalist no longer allowed to work, I have my first novel written “, she says in an interview in January 2015.

Together with other publicists and journalists later buys a run-down house and defying the dictatorship of the” Alliance of Independent Journalists “. 1998 From this place take the mass demonstrations that led to the fall of the dictator, their output. Even today, Ayu Utami currently works as a journalist and is politically active. In 2008 she wrote a widely acclaimed play against the planned “anti-pornography law.”

supposedly pornographic

How Ayu Utami also Djenar Maesa Ayu is criticized under the label of so-called fragrance literature and publicly attacked as a woman of dubious morals. “I can live with criticism, finally learns every reader literature subjectively. But many people have not even read my books, but babbling by merely that I had slept with many men to advance my career,” she countered in a Interview in September 2014. Ultimately, they motivated such hostility only to continue to write about taboo subjects.

Especially the short story Fed by the Father has been controversial because of its allegedly pornographic content and awarded simultaneously with prices. The author here makes the problem of child abuse within the family to the public issue. The fictional narrator Nayla portrays in dramatic vested their way from the unwanted fetus to her own unplanned pregnancy as a young girl. The boundaries between fiction and documentary, between voluntary prostitution and child abuse, sexual fantasy and between suffering of a victim of sexual violence.

Yvonne Michalik studied Southeast Asian Studies, Ethnology and media culture. She was a lecturer at the University of Babelsberg film. Today she works as a freelance in cross-media sectors. She has released several publications on South-East Asia. © private

All this, which represented the writers of secular direction, reject the authors of the Islamic camp. The books of the “scent literature” not reflected the Indonesian culture again, but propagated Western values, so their accusation. Descriptions of free sex and homosexuality feel like authors Helvy Tiana Rosa or Sirikit Syah as amoral and defend in their narratives the rules of the Koran. They point out that the Koran legitimate regulations on polygamy, treatment of women and gender equality contained, they would just not enforced properly.

As part of the “anti-pornography law”, which, inter alia, also the “erotic” dancing and the Zurschaustellen “sensual” body parts in public is punishable, it is 2008 on a first public confrontation of the two camps: Ayu Utami and Djenar Mesa Ayu fought publicly against Helvy Tiana Rosa and Sirikit Syah that the Law advocate as necessary to stop the moral decay of the country.