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'Women of Letters' revives lost art with new voices
Author, author: McKay recently released a short story collection titled Holiday in Cambodia
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Author, author: McKay recently released a short story collection titled Holiday in Cambodia. Mckay said she was intrigued by the chance to do something different in Jakarta after writing about serious issues for some time. (Courtesy Salihara/Witjak Widhi Cahya) (Courtesy Salihara/Witjak Widhi Cahya)
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span class="caption" style="width: 508px;">Author, author: McKay recently released a short story collection titled Holiday in Cambodia. Mckay said she was intrigued by the chance to do something different in Jakarta after writing about serious issues for some time. (Courtesy Salihara/Witjak Widhi Cahya)
'Dear all the women over the entire span of human history, I wish I knew how to help.
'But not much has changed in some respects; why is there even the so called progressive society when women are still blamed and shamed; I wish I knew what to do [...]'
So said award-winning Australian poet Emilie Zoey Baker as she read aloud a letter showing her concerns about the current conditions facing women, which apparently have not changed much since the old days.
The reading was part of a recent performance at the Salihara Theater in South Jakarta, where the audience was invited to follow the journey of women through time through their own words.
Some of the letters gave voice to anger. Others generated laughter.
Baker was joined by four others for the inaugural 'Women of Letters' event in the capital.
Author Okky Madasari, writer and performer Khairani Barokka, writer and women's activist Olin Monteiro and Australian writer Laura Jean McKay took turns reading letters that told of their dreams and desires during the show.
Okky ' who received the Khatulistiwa Award, one of the nation's top literary honors, in 2012 ' wrote a letter addresses to German sociologist Jürgen Habermas, whose works focus mostly on democracy and the rule of law. In it, she described the social and political conditions in contemporary Indonesia.
She wanted to inform Habermas that in Indonesia, injustice still prevails, poverty and inequality linger and corruption remains the nation's main problem. 'And through my novel, dear Jürgen, I want to give another view.'
Okky, who regularly writes about human rights and freedom in her novels, said that she chose to write to Habermas, whom she said was a great philosopher whose ideas on transformation in the public sphere had greatly influenced many.
After the seriousness of Okky's letter, there was swift change of mood when McKay took the podium and read a letter that she wrote to 'mortification'.
In a theatrical performance, McKay spoke of her childhood, a time when the Australian said that she often felt embarrassed or deeply shamed by the many things she did.
McKay, who recently published a compilation of short stories titled Holiday in Cambodia, said that she had been intrigued by the chance to create something different in Jakarta after writing about serious issues for some time. 'It was interesting to go through a happy silly childhood journey.'
The author said that she chose to write to mortification, as she realized that she often felt mortified as a performer or a writer. 'And so I thought it would be really interesting to write a letter in public to mortification; it's like facing my greatest fear,' she said.
The idea for Women of Letters originated in Melbourne, Australia. The monthly gathering, curated by writers Marieke Hardy and Michaela McGuire, brings together five of Melbourne's best writers, musicians, politicians or comedians in celebration of the lost art of letter-writing.
McGuire said that after nearly four years, Women of Letters had visited every provincial capital in Australia, as well as holding annual shows in Brisbane and Sydney.
'Earlier this year we did three shows in the US ' Los Angeles, New York and Austin, Texas ' and we're planning to do six to eight shows in the US next year,' McGuire said.
Besides Jakarta, Women of Letters has held sessions in Yogyakarta and Bali.
McGuire said that the other Indonesian shows had been presented in partnership with the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, which had given her a long list of potential candidates.
'We combed our way through, tweaked our wish list a little until we had settled on the five readers who ended up doing the show,' according to McGuire. 'It was very important to us to have a mix of Indonesian and Australian writers, and we wanted to ensure that each had a very different background.'
Olin said her participation in the event had evoked teenage memories of having a pen pal. 'Apart from emails, I never sat down and thought of words I would like to say in a letter like I often did when I was in junior high school with my pen pal.'
The writer said that she had stopped writing to him after two years of intense correspondence, adding that she hoped she could find him and start writing letters again.
'There are so many things I want to tell him, like I have reached some of my goals. But it's so hard to track his whereabouts,' Olin said.
