I’ve never read sastra lokal that relies heavily on history and politic such as this, although the setting is familiar, i still find it difficult to imagine if this is the indonesia or even surabaya that I know of. The setting’s in the late 19th century but a lot of the issues are still prevalent in indonesia today, the colorism, racism, the glorifying of “bule” or “white people” and “indo / half indonesian half white person”, the very much Eurocentric beauty standard and derogative terms being thrown at fellow Indonesians who have darker skin. How come a country has progressed so much for the past 100 years and yet not really? There was a line in the book that also mentioned this. “Science was giving birth to more and more miracles. But mankind and its problems remained as they have always been.”

Minke, the main characters, after 367 pages of the book, remains an enigma to me despite being the one who tells the story. He doesn’t share his true or family name, he doesnt talk about what drives him to do the things that he does other than to understand his earth of mankind, a sentiment that feels so idealistic to me. He doesn’t seem to care very much about the castes in society or to gain any sort of power and become a Bupati like his father. He takes the name minke and owns it, despite it being sadly an insult thrown at him by his very much white teacher who called him a monkey. No one knows anything about his past, he doesn’t share about the name of his brother or his sisters, it’s almost like one day he just exists in surabaya and he refuses to tell us, the reader, about his life’s history.

Ann is as flat as a piece of cardboard, she falls in love with another boy in a day and then remains spineless and gets sick when she doesn’t see him, the dramatics of it all! As a modern woman in Indonesia today, I couldn’t relate to the love story being told in this book, but I understand that this is set 100 years ago, I know nothing of how “love” works in those days.

Nyai Ontosoroh is one of the best character in this book. She’s a strong, independent, self-made, self-educated, self-employed, spiteful Nyai, who despite of her circumstances, developed her own sense of agency, to hell with all the foreigners, colonizers, and spineless men who tries to bring her down because of her position in society, her race, and where she came from. There was a point in the book where she was in court and she, as a Nyai, a native woman, must talk to the judges in Javanese decided to hell with these people and showed them what’s up and decided to speak to them in flawless dutch, much to their dismay, and had to be dragged out of the courtroom, probably while cursing everyone while she was at it.
She also made several points in her speech, no lies were detected, simply put, she served.

“Europeans are able to purchase Native women just as I was purchased. Are such purchases truer than pure love? If Europeans can act in these ways because of their superior wealth and power, why is it that Native must become the target of scorn and insults because of pure love?”

"It was I who gave birth to her, who reared her, who educated her without a single cent of aid from you honorable gentlemen. Or perhaps it wasn't I who have been responsible for her all this time? You gentlemen have never worked for and worried after her. Why all the fuss now?" Nyai no longer heeded the court's authority. A police officer was ordered to remove her from the courtroom. She was dragged from her place, unable to resist. But her tongue did not stop letting fly words, bullets of revenge.
"Who turned me into a concubine? Who turned us all into nyais? European gentlemen, made masters. Why in these official forums are we laughed at? Humiliated? Or is it that you gentlemen want my daughter to become a concubine too?"

Nyai Ontosoroh, feminist icon, just does not give a single flying FUCK.

Also some lines I annotated:

"Is that accursed slavery going to be brought back? How can human beings be looked upon purely from the point of view of official documents and without considering their essence as human beings?"

"What is the point of having all these schools if they still don't teach what are people's rights and what are not, what is right and what is not?"

"I've never been to school, child, Nyo. I've never been taught to admire Europeans. You could study for years and years, and no matter what you studied, your spirit will be educated to do the same thing, to admire Europeans without limits or end, so that you no longer know who you are and where you are. Even so, those who have been to school are still more fortunate. At the very least you get to know other races who have their own ways of thieving the property of other peoples."

"They looked upon human beings as no more than items in an inventory."

"They can't stand seeing Natives not being trodden under their feet. Natives must always be in the wrong, Europeans must be innocent, so therefore Natives must be wrong to start with. To be born a Native is to be in the wrong. We're facing a more difficult situation now, Minke."

And this part, that touched my deeply because it highlights the strength, the resilience of Indonesians during the war.

"Now if for example, Aceh wins and Holland is defeated, will the Netherlands become an Acehnese possession?"
"There is no way Aceh can win."
"Yes, that's precisely the point. The Acehnese themselves know they can't win, while the Dutch know too that victory will surely be theirs. Yet, Telinga, the Acehnese still descend to the battlefield. They don't fight to win. They're different from the Dutch. If the Dutch thought that Aceh was strong enough to defend itself, they would never dare attack, let alone start a war. The whole thing is a matter of calculating the profit and loss of capital. If the whole issue is just a matter of winning, why doesn't Holland attack Luxembourg or Belgium, since they're both closer and richer?"

This book is filled to the brim with the author's contempt towards colonialism, social commentaries, and author's thoughtful view of the world. A very good book, truly worth a read!