TRYING TO SHIFT A LOW-READING CULTURE

Keyboard agonies and publishing ecstasy      

Driving force: Tri Hatmaningsih

                              

It was a mixed mob that gathered at Madura’s Trunojoyo University. Mainly young, overwhelmingly female, many frustrated, a few triumphant, all infected.

If they didn’t itch they wouldn’t have driven across Indonesia’s longest bridge, the cable-stayed Suramadu, to get from Surabaya to this isolated campus set among paddy and little else on a humid Sunday for a book discussion.

They called themselves Citizen Reporters but would be better classified as academics and students hooked on storytelling.  One of the more successful tried to shrink by dubbing herself ‘Mrs RT (rumah tangga) … a housewife who gets her money from her husband’. 

In the West such faux diffidence would have prompted protest, but rural Indonesia has yet to feel outraged by expressions of gender inequality.  Helene Jeane Koloway (below) is multilingual, lives in France, is well-traveled and much published, including in National Geographic. ‘Mrs RT’ indeed.

She says that at 50 she’s reached her peak but has started making video packages for TV stations, writing scripts, delivering the commentary and shooting the vision.

In Europe she writes to promote her homeland.  Her titles include Memburu Fatamorgana (Chasing the Mirage) Love Journey and Love Journey 2.

But in Madura she deferred to the 26 writers who’d joined her at the launch of Ini Baru Cipo (this is the new Cipo) anthology.  Elsewhere Cipo is a nasty gut disorder but here it’s a clumsy acronym for CItizen rePOrter. 

The 120 Cipos turned the event into a talent show. Participants punctuated questions which morphed into statements by waving their books like Bible-thrusting evangelicals: Behold! I’ve made it into print!

Organised by Tri Hatmaningsih, editor of the Surabaya-based Surya daily, the novitiates were seeking the grail of writing that gets read.  Or read by more than the veteran journalist gatekeeper, tough grammar enforcer and shredder of sloppy copy.

Hatmaningsih deleted suggestions that Cipo was using young writers to fill white space while not putting something into their wallets.  Surya is owned by the nation’s biggest media conglomerate Kompas Gramedia.

‘We do give an honorarium to some contributors and pay those we commission to write,’ she said.  ‘Cipo offers young people the chance to see their work in print and that can encourage them to continue.’

Mainstream media using so-called citizen journalists is a contentious issue around the world. Professionals fear they’ll be displaced but recognise that some diggers through social media have exhumed stories they’ve missed.

The danger is that ethical practices and respect for facts aren’t always present; nor is the wall maintained between balanced reportage and opinion.

Rintahani Johan Pradana has avoided such hassles by concentrating on history  where reader interest is being nurtured by rising nationalism.  His Rumah Guru Bangsa (home of the nation’s teacher) tells of trade unionist Oemar Said Tjokroaminoto’s philosophies; one of the boarders at the activist’s Surabaya house was Soekarno.

If cynicism is a useful quality, then teacher and keyboard warrior Priyandono has it in spades.  ‘I started writing critically about the education system, students having to wear uniforms and corruption,’ he said. 

‘When I discussed teachers producing text books that students had to buy I got complaints. Suddenly I was able to meet so many teachers that I’d never encountered before.’

His book Ringan Tapi Berisi (Light but with Contents) explores social habits, school routines, tourism and cooking.  His message to the audience: Observe. There are stories everywhere, even in the most mundane events.

The upside for Indonesia’s upcoming Hemingways is that most paperbacks retail  below Rp 50,000 (US$3.50).  Sure, they’re on grey paper and the spines soon crack, but good for a few reads.

Diaspora of the dreaded

The Madurese get a bad press outside their arid zone where the main exports are lurid tales of vengeful knifemen - and people. Around 3.6 million remain on their whale-like island, its baleen nudging the nation’s second biggest city Surabaya; double that number are spread around the archipelago.

Determined to alter the image is Imron Wakhid Harits (left)  another multilingual he earned a PhD at Palacky University in the Czech Republic with a thesis on children’s literature. He now lectures at Trunojoyo, but has found a wider market by mining local lore.  So far he’s collected more than 300 stories.

‘The Government pays me to teach which gives me security,’ he said.  ‘I write because I want to and I’m hoping to sell overseas. I want the world to know more of the rich culture of Madura.

‘This year I’ll have a book published on folk tales and their religious and moral values.  ‘Indonesian writers have difficulties getting local readers. Our authors are better accepted in Malaysia.  We are not appreciated in our homeland’.

Koloway agreed: ‘Indonesians don’t like literature. Students turn away from a book if it’s too complicated.  They prefer translations of Agatha Christie’s mysteries.

‘There’s a lack of literary criticism. Indonesians are not great overseas travelers so don’t get to see other cultures and understand different viewpoints.’

Not a bookish nation

More than 95 per cent of Indonesian adults are literate and close to 100 per cent for the new generation, according to UNESCO.  But that doesn’t mean they turn to books once they’ve left school.

The country ranks 60 out of 61 in reading interest according to research by the Central Connecticut State University in the US.

The World's Most Literate Nation report http://www.ccsu.edu/wmln/) puts Indonesia below its neighbors and just above Botswana in Southern Africa.

According to research by the National Library in Jakarta, most children prefer TV to books. It reported that in developed countries between 20 and 30 books a year are read by the average citizen.

In Indonesia it’s three. Maybe four or more once Cipo gets underway.

First published in Indonesia Expat 24 October 2018

LOOK MUM, I CAN READ IN THE DARK

Last week I realised that I don’t have to go to Singapore.

This illumination occurred in the back seat of a car travelling at night between Surabaya and Malang, via Mr Bakrie’s contribution to the environment. I certainly smelt the Lapindo mud volcano, but otherwise didn’t notice.

That’s because I was reading Hitch 22, the memoirs of the Anglo-American columnist Christopher Hitchens.

It’s a book that I probably wouldn’t have bought. Published last year it’s priced around $ US 27 (Rp 240,000) and most difficult to find in Indonesia.

I kept reading during the three-hour trip because I’d downloaded the book free from the public library in New Zealand where I’m a member onto a back-lit E-reader. Six hours time difference and 8,000 kilometers are no deterrent. The system works 24 / 7.

My wife cruelly dismisses this revolutionary marvel as ‘your toy’, inferring, I suppose, that I play with it rather than her

Play? This is education, information and work because the device also allows access to the world’s best newspapers. That’s provided I can get close enough to a fast-food shop’s WiFi system without actually having to eat its Styrofoam buns.

Indonesia has the lowest Internet penetration rate is Southeast Asia – around seven per cent. Only a fraction of that number has access to high-speed broadband, so the uptake of E-readers is still low.

Not abroad. You see the pseudo paperbacks in doctors’ waiting rooms, airport lounges, government offices and every place where the public is treated with contempt. No wonder the big bookstores overseas are literally closing their books.

I resisted for some time, seduced by the argument that an E-reader didn’t have the feel and smell of a book. There’s pleasure in savoring the design, typography and layout found in a good hardback.

All true, and when I saw an original King James Bible on tour to celebrate the 400^th anniversary of that magisterial work, I beheld an object of great beauty.

However I could hardly read the text, not because it was in Old English but because the columns were too narrow and the ink had bled into the grey paper.

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That’s not the situation with my E-reader. I can adjust the font size and control the screen’s brightness. No need to find stained beer coasters for bookmarks. That job can be done electronically. So no need to drink.

Of course there are downsides. It’s difficult to show off your erudition with a slim slab of black plastic, when sagging shelves display your tastes and character through the books you’ve bought and supposedly read.

Try bragging about your E-reader library when the system deletes borrowed books just two weeks after downloading.

It took time to choose the toy, whoops, device that best suited my needs. I’m glad I didn’t buy the market leader. Although the price was reasonable the purchaser is locked into buying books from the US supplier that reportedly won’t accept foreign credit cards.

The key is to make sure your machine can accept books in e-pub format, the system used by the Guttenberg Project, which has thousands of out-of-copyright titles free to download and keep.

As an author I should be opposing this trend. If people don’t buy my royalty stream will be reduced to a trickle. But Indonesians treat copyright like all man-made laws – with derision. I’ve been losing money for years through photocopying, so why worry?

What’s Singapore got to do with all this? Those of us who make visa runs to the silver city justified the trip by spending hours in Borders and coming home with 20 kilos of books.

Instead I can now go to the local Immigration Office and get a visa renewal under a sign warning me not to pay bribes. I followed this splendid advice and so spent four days waiting for the magic stamp while others brought plump envelopes with their documents and were out in a flash.

But no worries. I passed the time profitably by getting through a couple of hefty novels. The wattage may be as dim as the bureaucrats, but this E-man can read anywhere. Duncan Graham.

(First published in The Sunday Post 11 December 2011)

SUPERLISS - OR THE GLAMOR OF READING

The glamor of Superliss ©

Why are so many Indonesians reluctant readers?

Nurullita (Lita) Berlianti, 35, has a volume of reasons, and speaks with some authority.

She’s one of those blessed people who chose their parents wisely, rearing her in a book-filled home where sitting hunched over a good yarn was considered behavior warranting reward, not reproof. And when she wasn’t curled up in an armchair turning pages she was airbussing her way around the world turning up other cultures

Which is as it should be because her family were publishers, a business now maintained by their smart daughter.

“For most poor Indonesian women the number one priority is putting food on the table for their family,” Lita said.

“Women are so busy. The average woman is multiskilled. She has to be a wife, a mother, a babysitter, a caregiver to other relatives and a manager of limited resources.

“In most cases books just aren’t on her shopping list. Even to buy a small book that retails for Rp 25,000 (US $3) means that she might have to forego five meals.

“Yet the reality is that kids love books and of course they are an essential part of education.”

Another factor may be the policies of past governments that labelled books as potentially dangerous, seditious instruments that might stir the masses to question their leaders.

During Soeharto’s new order administration tight controls were exercised on authors and publishers. Reading then was considered much like drug use today, an evil that could destroy society.

Bookshops were akin to chemists – the wares sealed and held behind locked glass doors. Today the books are on open shelves, but the plastic wraps remain and grumpy guards watch for those who want to peel, not purchase.

So what to do? Lita isn’t short of ideas, including a proposal that the government should better control school curricula so parents don’t have to buy a new text every year. Instead they should be able to pass the same book down to their younger children.

More radical is her suggestion that the government subsidises the cost of paper for book printing, a policy that she said was having an impact on reading in India, making books cheap and available to the masses.

With a government already crippled by maintaining subsidies on basic commodities like rice and fuel, adding another burden to the economy seems unlikely despite its power for good.

So in the meantime Lita and two friends, businesswoman Litasari and psychologist and social activist Dyah Katarina decided to stop muttering and start motivating.

The results of the trois amigos’ energies (pictured above) peaked at an extraordinary event staged last Saturday (26 April) in a shopping mall convention centre in Surabaya.

Dubbed Superliss it was more like a political rally held before a backdrop of a portrait of national heroine Kartini, a pen and a book. In the auditorium more than 1,000 women dressed in yellow, green and blue T shirts, whipped into a lather by silver-tongued MCs, showed the sort of enthusiasm Hillary Clinton could only imagine.

On the stage speakers gave testimonials of how their lives had been changed since they started reading and writing, using the sort of language normally heard at religious revivals and to the huge delight of the frenzied females.

Entering this maelstrom it seemed the show had been sponsored by an over-zealous manufacturer of skin whitener or hair shampoo. Superliss has that certain ring of freshness, the development of a lissom figure and romantic success that accompanies the destruction of dandruff.

“It’s a made up word from our vision and slogan of Seribu Perempuan Menulis (a thousand women writing),” said Dyah. She also doubles as the wife of the mayor of Surabaya, Bambang Dwi Hartono, but would still be formidable without that cachet.

“We want to get across the message that if you don’t read and write you are going to be left behind. Women are such a powerful influence in the family. They can be agents of change. If we can convince 1,000 of the importance of books then they will spread the message.”

On the stage the electrified Litasari cracked jokes at broadband speed, got her listeners laughing and singing, leaping up and down, whooping slogans and generally having a rollicking good time. In amongst the quips were smart tips on reading faster and staying on course.

“Remain focussed on the task,” screamed Litasari, an expert on speed reading. If the sound system had been linked to a tsunami warning it would have ranked as a red alert.

“If you feel you are getting tired suck a sweet. Glance up from the page occasionally, cover one eye and look at something far away. Then do the same with the other eye.”

On big screens easy-to-remember logos, verses, singalongs and pictures pummelled the message that reading is yeah, wow, like trendy, fun, better than fashion. The women were so enthralled most forgot to use their handphones. If school had been like this no one would ever leave half educated.

“It’s true that we are an oral culture,” said Lita who reads her children bedtime stories and knows this is still unusual parenting. “If you’re a bookworm at school you’re likely to be considered a freak.

“In Europe people understand the enormous importance of books and give authors high status in society. That’s part of their culture.

“In Indonesia the growth of television has also damaged literacy, so we have to make reading and writing look glamorous.

“If we had an internationally famous well-established author sitting on this sofa alongside a starlet from a forgettable sinetron (soap opera), the journalists would only be interested in the actress.”

But this time the scribes and lenses were focussing on the femoforce of literacy in full attack mode and never given a moment to ask banal questions about marital status and womb production statistics. “Despite everything I’m positive,” shouted Lita above the din as a thousand lungs praised the written word. “I really think things are improving.

“There are more books being published and more bookshops being opened. A few, like mine, let customers browse – even when they don’t eventually buy.” Now that is progress.

(First published in The Jakarta Post 5 May 2008.)

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READING IN INDONESIA

BRINGING THE NATION TO BOOK © 2007 Duncan Graham

In many other countries novelist Budi Darma would be a National Treasure, probably the recipient of a hefty grant to help the septuagenarian keep keyboarding.

But this is Indonesia, and as this eminence grise of modern Indonesian literature knows well, culture and the arts aren't on the government's must-fix list. Nor are books the top buy in the average family's shopping trolley, despite more people finding the courage to enter bookshops.

Now if Budi had been a fading TV star instead of an academic luminary we'd be elbowing each other aside to get his autograph and words of wisdom.

"There have been two print-runs of my Orang-Orang Bloomington (People of Bloomington) each of 5,000 copies," he said. "For Indonesia that's not too bad."

For an acclaimed collection of short stories first published 27 years ago and still on the shelves, that wouldn't be considered too bad in somewhere like New Zealand where reading is the national pastime and there are more books than sheep. But the population of the archipelago is 60 times larger than the Shaky Isles.

"The problem is our culture," said psychologist Audifax, who is also an author, analyzing characters and plots in popular fiction, including Harry Potter. "We're an oral society. We watched events like wayang kulit (shadow puppets) in the past, and now we're hooked on television."

But there's another, more sinister factor operating. Writers have long been considered dangerous people in Indonesian society, terrorists with word grenades. The Dutch built the jails that were filled by Soekarno and then Soeharto.

During the New Order government it was unsafe to be seen in the company of books authored by people like the late Pramoedya Ananta Toer, the greatest of Indonesian writers last century. Overseas he was being nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature; in his homeland he was black-banned.

In the darkest days of Soeharto bookshops were like chemists; the plastic-covered products were in a glass case behind the counter. You had to make your selection (that carried the censor's approval stamp), and then run away to read your purchase in somewhere less austere.

There's no tradition of free public government-funded libraries as in much of the British Commonwealth, and the idea of reading a book at bedtime is considered weird.

Bookshops are better now, though most still deter browsing by shrink-wrapping, denying customers chairs while a stockpile of staff watch your every move.

They have reason: When workers' backs are turned some students whip out their mobile phone cameras and snap the pix or text they need for the next assignment.

There are some great exceptions, like novelist Richard Oh's welcoming QB World bookshops that look and feel more like Borders in Singapore, the necessary stop for all book-loving expats on visa runs to the island state. Then there's the new kid in Indonesia, Johan Budhie Sava with his TM Bookstores, also trading as Togamas.

His shops are spacious with some spots to sample the text and not all books are sealed. The store in Surabaya has 20,000 volumes and the place is far more welcoming than the Gramedia and Toko Agung stores.

"It's little by little," Johan said. "People are slowly starting to become more interested in books. Times are changing, but price is still a factor. It's difficult to move anything with a tag of more than Rp 50,000 (US $ 6)."

Budi Darma is also cautiously upbeat. He reckons the change started in 1999. When fourth president Abdurrahman Wahid closed the Department of Information there were 292 magazines and newspapers. That number rapidly jumped to more than 2,000 before a shakeout. Around 830 have survived.

"It's been the same with book publishers, particularly in Yogyakarta," he said. "Three or four people in a kos (boarding house) with some computer skills could become instant publishers. Of course the problem has always been distribution and competition for shelf space."

Much of this output has been a waste of trees; there may be hundreds of new titles but the print size is large, the print run small, pages are few and the quality of language and grammar worries purists.

The much awarded Budi Darma, who is now an emeritus professor, has spent much of life training teachers at the State University of Surabaya.

"The reality is that writing is a lonely job and most Indonesians prefer to be in groups," he said. "It's not a high status profession as it is in the West. (He studied in the US).

"Nor does it enhance your status to have a library at home. People are more concerned with cars and houses and furniture. They think buying books is a waste of money."

Although she accepts the truth of this statement, the electric Lan Fang is outraged that men prefer to spend on tobacco instead of type. "People are also so busy, with both parents working," she said. "Many genuinely don't have time to read."

Lan has been writing for about 20 years and although she started as a teenager she's no superficial author of chick lit, a genre that bookseller Johan Budhie Sava believes is now boring readers. She writes about relationships with more maturity and understanding.

Like her mentor Budi, she has also tried her hand with success at short stories, a form that does well in Indonesia but not in the West. Many writers, like Lan Fang, got their break in newspapers.

This is another big plus for Indonesia; in Australia and other Western countries, short stories have had to yield to the pap of infotainment. For some the road into the bookshop must start with the discovery of fiction while checking the sports results over breakfast.

But when the nascent bibliophile does make it past the surly security guards who know everyone is a thief, they're likely to be disappointed. A good guide to public taste (or the publishers' definition) is shelf space.

The sastra (literature) shelves look like an afterword; tomes on theology, how to make a mint in business (from the US) and comics (from Japan) push everything else off the edge. Most depressing is that large numbers have been written and published overseas where they've proved their salability; then local publishers buy up the rights.

"You can make a better living as a translator into Indonesian rather than an author in Indonesia," said Budi wryly. "I agree that there's a great gap in our national literature caused in part by bad education and the censorship of the New Order era when generations of creative talent were crushed and we were not encouraged to inquire.

"After we gained Independence most intellectuals looked to the West and did not try to understand the philosophy of their own country – even up to now. In many ways we have become too westernized.

"Most writers live in the big cities. They don't really know society in the country as Pram did so can't reflect it in their writing. We do not understand our own earth. Authors have been cut off from their traditions. And of course Indonesia is dominated by Java.

"Many still think that literature is not enjoyable, that it's difficult to digest. They just want to read a synopsis rather than the book.

"Now we have the freedom to write and read. But it seems that we haven't yet learnt how to handle that freedom."

(First published in The Weekender (JP) October 2007)
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