Some Changes to the List

I’m always making changes to my great master list, and I thought perhaps you guys might be interested in an update. First, a fellow blogger suggested Eka Kurniawan’s Beauty is a Wound for my Indonesian list. I love it (though I did find it problematic in some ways, which I will write about when I get to that blog post) and it made me worried that my methodology was unsound, since I had read a bunch of not-very-good Indonesian books, and had somehow missed that one. Kurniawan was on the Booker International longlist for another work, Man Tiger, so I thought perhaps adding all Booker nominees to my list would be a good start. I am also increasingly concerned about gender parity, so I’ve been trying to adjust my lists a little to make sure I have, wherever possible, equal numbers of male and female authors. Additions and subtractions are detailed below. Continue reading

Excerpt from “The Weaverbirds”

Fact was, there was my mother’s skin. She was fair, that’s true, but her skin had a tawny hue, very much like the color of the lansat fruit, held up as the model for the perfect “native” complexion. That was offered as one proof that Mama wasn’t pure-blooded Dutch. The color of real Dutch people is different, a splotchy red color like that of a piglet. So, actually, the comments of my friends from the garrison made me feel proud. Who wanted to be Dutch anyway when the life of a native army brat was a million times more interesting? Who wanted to be a Dutch boy, forced to dress so very neatly with a spanking white shirt and shoes and who had to remember hundreds of little points of politeness which made you end up feeling no better than a marmot in a cage?

-Y.B. Mangunwijaya, The Weaverbirds, 1981

East Timor: False starts

Funu: The Unfinished Saga of East Timor, Jose Ramos-Horta, 1987

  • East Timor, #1
  • Borrowed from SF Library
  • Rating: 2/5
  • Read: April 2017
  • Recommended for: Experts

The Crossing, Luis Cardoso, 1997

  • East Timor, #2
  • Borrowed from SF Library
  • Rating: 3/5
  • Read: April 2017
  • Recommended for: Exiles

Beloved Land: Stories, Struggles, and Secrets from Timor-Leste, Gordon Peake, 2013

  • East Timor, #5
  • Borrowed from SF Library
  • Rating: 2.5/5
  • Read: April 2017
  • Recommended for: Expositors

Continue reading