Readers of Tom Boellstorff's noteworthy earlier book, The Gay Archipelago: Sexuality and Nation in Indonesia (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005) will find much that is familiar here: Boellstorff suggests that this book can be read as a “companion volume” to the earlier one (p. 11). Once again, Boellstorff underlines how non-normative sexual desire in Indonesia provides the basis for a truly national, rather than ethnically particularized, identity, and that Indonesians who identify themselves as gay, lesbian, or transvestite seek recognition in a society that often treats them as either invisible or contemptible. What makes this volume valuable, however, is the new terrain on which Boellstorff pursues some of the same topics, namely, with reference (each in a different chapter) to zines, transvestites, language, religion, and political homophobia.
As a way to bind these topics together, Boellstorff suggests substituting “coincidence” for “straight time” as a model for scholarly activity. By...