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Bringing literature to the suburbs
Nurturing young minds: Participants of the 2018 South Tangerang Literacy Festival engage in a literary discussion
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urturing young minds: Participants of the 2018 South Tangerang Literacy Festival engage in a literary discussion. The festival, organized in Ciputat, South Tangerang, Banten from Nov. 17 to 18, sought to stimulate the emergence of creative workers from members of the millennial generation, while promoting literacy tradition along the way. (Courtesy of the 2018 South Tangerang Literacy Festival)
The second edition of the South Tangerang Literacy Festival in Banten took place last month, bringing together around 1,500 literary enthusiasts across not only South Tangerang but also other areas such as Depok, Bogor and Bekasi in West Java to engage with their favorite writers, veterans and beginners alike.
The festival was held from Nov. 17 to 18 in Kandank Jurank Doank park in Ciputat, South Tangerang, comprising panel discussions, scriptwriting and literary writing workshops, musical performance and film screenings. The festival also presented many booths where publishers could showcase their books.
The festival was marked by a cultural speech by writer and activist Nirwan Ahmad Arsuka, whose mobile library initiative Pustaka Bergerak has established more than 17,000 branches across the nation’s 33 provinces.
During the festival, the entire venue was decorated with many murals painted by local artist Edy Bonetski, who evoked the festival’s theme this year, New Narrations within their works.
The event had many highlights. Popular Indonesian novelist Dewi Lestari, also known as a singer, songwriter and musician, also gave participants a musical treat during the festival. Novelist and scriptwriter Ratih Kumala, whose novel, Gadis Kretek (Cigarette Girl), has been translated into English by Annie Tucker and published by British publisher Verso, meanwhile, facilitated a scriptwriting workshop.
According to festival director Sartika Dian Nuraini, the festival sought to attract local youngsters from the millennial generation, which according to Statistics Indonesia comprise around 60 percent of the city’s whole population, so that they can stimulate their minds to engage more intensively in creative endeavors to produce brand new works, hence the theme “new narrations”.
Furthermore, she added that the festival committee had chosen to organize the literacy event in South Tangerang to fill a void in the suburban area as most of these events typically took place in Jakarta.
“South Tangerang has the potential to become a creative economy hub as it becomes the intersection for youngsters from Jakarta’s other satellite cities to gather and work together,” Sartika told The Jakarta Post by phone.
Ratih added in a separate interview that many Indonesian literary writers, including herself, actually resided in the South Tangerang region, making the city an ideal location for literary festivals like this.
“The festival also aims at developing the careers of young writers. We feel that emerging writers do not get enough opportunity to appear on the national stage; at Jakarta’s literary events, for example, they typically appear as moderators only, it’s rare for them to be featured as speakers or panelists in these events,” Sartika added.
This was why, besides featuring already established writers, the festival also featured a batch of writers from a younger generation such as Dea Anugrah, Dewi Kharisma Michelia, Fariq Alfaruqi and Ziggy Zezsyazeoviennazabrizkie to engage with their readers. Furthermore, the festival also provided an opportunity for emerging writers to have their works discovered through a special “meet the publisher” program.
"The festival also aims at developing the careers of young writers. We feel that emerging writers do not get enough opportunity to appear on the national stage; at Jakarta’s literary events, for example, they typically appear as moderators only, it’s rare for them to be featured as speakers or panelists in these events
In its official press release, the festival committee also announced the release of its anthology, titled after the festival’s theme, featuring works by emerging writers who reside in the South Tangerang area, and aimed at helping these writers to be discovered.
Ratih said the younger generation of writers was greatly helped with the free access to information enabled by the internet, helping them to research their works faster and gain an eclectic creative influence.
Ratih also dispelled the myth that the younger generation of writers and creative workers were made complacent by the convenience the digital age had brought them. She said she was surprised by the depth of enthusiasm and knowledge possessed by her scriptwriting workshop participants regarding the field.
“Many of them had already worked in industrial sectors that intersect with scriptwriting, such as television producers, digital media creative officers, copywriters and researchers; many of them were also students. Therefore, they were able to ask highly pertinent questions during the workshop and were serious about working on their assignments when our workshop’s practice session started,” Ratih said.
Sartika added that the committee had been lucky enough to be able to work together with the city’s education and library agency, which helped the committee partner with 400 state and private schools across South Tangerang to reel more participants in.
“Many publishers’ booths are available across the park to remind these youngsters that they can also read books in their spare time. We aim at encouraging these young participants to read at least one book in a year [considering Indonesia’s low literacy habits], so they can build a stronger habit on that, which will help them hone their intellectual capacity to advance their careers later on,” she said.
Sartika was quick to add that despite Indonesia’s bad reputation as a country with a low literacy level (a report from the Central Connecticut State University in the United States in 2016 ranked Indonesia 60th out of 61 countries in terms of reading interest above Botswana in 61st place), the hard work of activists and publishers to overcome this problem had helped literature to gain traction among Indonesians of late.
She cited an annual report issued by the Creative Economy Agency in 2017, which ranked the book industry fifth in the list of creative economy sub-sectors which contributed the greatest to the country’s 2016 gross domestic product, with an amount of Rp 58.31 trillion (US$4.02 billion).
“We can still continue to increase the sector’s contribution to the nation’s gross domestic product by conducting such events,” she asserted.
Economic interests aside, the work of Sartika and her festival team had been driven by their strong belief in the potent power of literacy to push civilization forward.
“I believe that the history of civilization has been built through books upon books. Imagine what human beings would be if books were no longer around?” Sartika concluded the interview with a rhetorical question, emphasizing the importance of literacy activism.
