Brian Russell Roberts is Associate Professor of English at Brigham Young University and the author of
Keith Foulcher is Honorary Associate in the Department of Indonesian Studies at the University of Sydney and the coeditor of
Brian Russell Roberts is Associate Professor of English at Brigham Young University and the author of
Keith Foulcher is Honorary Associate in the Department of Indonesian Studies at the University of Sydney and the coeditor of
Frits Kandou’s “Richard Wright’s Impressions of Indonesia” (1956)
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Published:March 2016
2016. "Frits Kandou’s “Richard Wright’s Impressions of Indonesia” (1956)", Indonesian Notebook: A Sourcebook on Richard Wright and the Bandung Conference, Brian Russell Roberts, Keith Foulcher
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In May 1956, exactly one year after Wright’s departure from Indonesia, the newsletter of the Indonesian Council for Deliberations on National Culture published an extended series of extracts from the French translation of Wright’s book The Color Curtain, retranslated into Indonesian. Indonesian readers were thus informed of a number of Wright’s significant observations of Indonesia, and in particular of his Indonesian informants, within months of these observations’ appearance in English and French. The main focus of the excerpts involves Wright’s discussions with three unnamed Indonesian informants. Wright’s practice of not naming his Indonesian interlocutors was to prove controversial in Indonesia, and Kandou, by devoting the final section of his report to Wright’s misinformed comments on Indonesian sanitary practices, implied that Indonesian readers should approach the content of Wright’s Indonesian travelogue with some degree of skepticism.
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