Maesy Angelina has learned—and unlearned—a lot over the years. 

It turns out that opening a bookshop and keeping it open for almost a decade, can teach you a lot about character and community, as well as what you value in yourself and others. Whether it is shrugging off labels, reinventing the way we define success, or simply staying true to why she started POST—an independent bookshop and publisher in Pasar Santa, South Jakarta—, Maesy looks back on what she’s learned with a fondness and maturity we should all strive to adopt.

The math isn’t in our favor. But this city deserves more bookshops. 

I feel like Jakarta breaks people up into atoms instead of bringing them together. 

The honest answer is that we started POST for ourselves. We were looking for a place to belong. We wanted a place to meet different people and exchange stories—a place to connect with others. 

To start something is easy, but to make sure that something stays alive and thrives over time is difficult. It’s so easy to start something, but much harder to keep it going.

When we started at Pasar Santa we wanted a place where different communities could take over the space, but once a month we would turn it into a bookshop. We realized that the part we liked most was the bookshop. So we had the bookshop and then a couple of years later we started publishing as well.

The biggest surprise has been how kind other independent publishers in the scene have been. When we started, we had just a couple of shelves. We didn’t know what we were doing. Then generous reading communities and independent publishing teams came in and they were so generous with the advice and support, giving workshops or talks for free. 

We try to pay back that generosity by being consistent. It might not sound like much. But in all honesty the most difficult thing is being consistent. We are eight years old. We are eight years in and our vision is the same and I still spend most of my weekends at POST. It is still a place to belong in Jakarta and a way to connect. We offer people who love books a refuge here in Jakarta. 

What would 16-year-old me think of me? She’d be ecstatic if she knew that in the future she was going to start a bookshop with her partner and people she considers family. She might question my choices and ask, “Why didn’t you scale?” I think little, ambitious me would ask that. 

POST is something we take care of in the same way you would take care of a child. And you can’t scale that. You have to just show up. You have a few people who come in and help along the way, but unless you are there and give it the care it needs it won’t thrive. And if you want to scale you can’t be there all the time to give it the attention it needs. Some people might enjoy that challenge, but that’s not why we started POST. 

Looking at narratives out there people’s version of success is going to scale, but actually there are a lot of other ways to look at success: Thinking about whether you’ve grown in terms of your curation, the way that you see things, asking yourself if you are still true to your vision and whether you are still learning.

I’m against the idea of “total originality.” I don’t think that exists. If someone says “POST pioneered having an independent bookshop in the market,” I’d say that’s not true. Just go to any traditional market and you’ll see booksellers there already. But people don’t consider them innovative because they're not of a certain social class. 

For me activism is first and foremost about other people and not for yourself. So I wouldn’t call what I do activism. I don’t like labels. I think younger me might have been more audacious and said, “Yeah, we give people a place […]” but my current self wouldn’t. I admit that POST brings joy to me and if what I do brings positive things to other people, I am also happy about that. 

For me activism is about dismantling social structures. It’s about really fighting for the marginalized. And I don’t think POST is that. 

I hate the term “Giving a voice to the voiceless.” People can speak for themselves. All other people have to do is pass the mic and let others have the stage.

I’m never going to say that we paved the way for alternative bookshops and spaces or that we are activists. I’m not comfortable with those labels. 

I think about what values we hold and how we can translate that to the flavor of the books we sell and publish as well as the atmosphere people feel when they come to POST. 

I want to challenge my own convictions.

I learn and unlearn a lot of things. I’ve unlearned the idea of a certain standard or canon that every activist should read. For instance, I’ve seen people in the literary scene, a lot of them shame people who have never read Pramoedya Ananta Toer. I disagree with that, but maybe younger me would have done the same thing. I might have carried some of that arrogance as well. But I know now that people can be inspired, educated and motivated to do amazing things by all kinds of different books. 

I would rather be a place where people can find a book that aids them in their journey instead of being a place that says “You’re a loser if you haven’t read this book,” or “You call yourself an activist but you haven’t read this book?” I can’t stand that kind of attitude.

I used to think there was a binary. Either people are insensitive or they are woke. But through my own experiences at POST, I understand that there’s always room for improvement and that we are all learning. I have had conversations with very young people who are definitely more progressive than I was at their age or I meet people who openly say that they might have been sexist in their younger days and now realize that it’s difficult to change, but they are trying anyway. 

What I’m learning is that all we can do is continuously learn and not think we’re the exception instead of the rule when it comes to these things. 

We make mistakes. One time we misgendered an author and a reader corrected us. Our readers interact with us in a way where we can learn and acknowledge that we make mistakes. We can thank them and make the correction right away. I love that. 

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