Family Room: Short Story

The stories in Family Room will transport readers from Indonesian villages and remote islands to the capital city of Jakarta; from Victoria Park in Hong Kong to refugee camps in Kashmir; and also to expedition camps near the lakes of Finland. The mosaic of family rooms, seen through the eyes of the narrators, gives us a sense of what Indonesia has gone through from time to time. The further away the protagonists leave home, the stronger their unspoken yearning to unravel the traumas rooted at the center of their family homes. One especially strategic room, where all of the dark sociocultural and political dimensions are dramatized brilliantly, is the kitchen, where women churn dreams, fears, social and political intrigues away. Another one is the bedroom, where babies are born and a maternal figure dies. In these domestic and feminized spaces, family and political affairs are played out in its sharpest intensity.

• Lily Yulianti Farid, Author

  Lily Yulianti Farid started writing at a young age. In junior high school, her first try at creative writing, a novella titled Kepada Bunda (For Mother), won a prize from Gadis magazine. As an adult, she spent most of her time working as a journalist: first at Kompas newspaper in Jakarta (1996-2000), at Radio Australia in Melbourne (2001-2004), NHK-Radio Japan in Tokyo (2004-2008), and Nytid news magazine in Oslo. Between her activities as a journalist, Lily founded and ran www.panyingkul.com: a website devoted to citizen journalism, and Makkunrai Project in Makassar, which has staged plays and monologues focusing on gender and women issues. She has released two collections of short stories: Makkunrai and Maiasaura in 2008. Lily obtained her undergraduate degree from Hassanudin University in Makassar. She holds an M.A. in gender studies and development from the University of Melbourne where she is now pursuing her doctoral degree.

• John H. McGlynn, Translator

  John H. McGlynn has translated several dozen publications under his own name, and through the Lontar Foundation, which he co-founded in 1987, has ushered into print close to two hundred books on Indonesian language, literature, and culture. He is the Indonesian country editor for MĀNOA, a literary journal published by the University of Hawai'i Press the senior editor for I-Lit, an on-line journal focusing on Indonesian literature in translation; a contributing editor to Words Without Borders and Warscapes, U.S. based literary journals; and an editor advisor for Jurnal Sastra, an Indonesian-language on-line journal. He is also a frequent speaker at seminars both in Indonesia and abroad.