Indonesian Notebook: A Sourcebook on Richard Wright and the Bandung Conference
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
Beb Vuyk’s “A Weekend with Richard Wright” (1960)
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Published:March 2016
Having fled to the Netherlands under increasingly hostile political conditions in Indonesia, Beb Vuyk published the most detailed and significant account of Wright’s Indonesian travels by any of his interlocutors in Indonesia in 1960 in the magazine Vrij Nederland. Until now, her two-part article has been overlooked by commentators on The Color Curtain and missummarized by Wright’s biographers and bibliographers. It offers an intimate view of the literary and cultural exchanges enabled by Wright’s attendance at the Bandung Conference, from the perspective of someone other than Wright himself. Complementing and competing with Wright’s own account, it is a valuable case study of the quandaries and misrecognitions involved in global intellectual exchange amid increasing Cold War tensions. The second part of Vuyk’s article appeared only two days before Wright’s death, curtailing the intention of Wright’s Dutch translator and Vuyk herself to pursue further the question of the accuracy of Wright’s recollections.
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