“Finding the Distant Homeland Here”: Contemporary Indonesian Poetry in Chinese

Abstract

This article focuses on three themes in contemporary Chinese-language verse from Indonesia: nationhood, language use, and the trauma of history. Through these themes, Chinese-language poets in Indonesia work through the many ways of being a speaker of Chinese in Indonesia, sometimes as an excluded alien, sometimes as a valued ally, and sometimes as an integrated minority. Such work provides unusual perspectives and tones to contribute to the much-discussed questions of Chinese-Indonesian identity, and functions as a reminder that literary corpora diverge within the “same” ethnic minority by linguistic expression. Borrowing a line from one of the most active poets, Sha Ping, this article suggests that Indonesians writing in Chinese are engaged on a quest to “find the distant homeland here” in Indonesia, even as they honor the trauma of history, the achievements of China, and the language of their ancestors.