Full Description
Dorothy Fujita-Rony's The Memorykeepers: Gendered Knowledges, Empires, and Indonesian American History examines the importance of women's memorykeeping for two Toba Batak women whose twentieth-century histories span Indonesia and the United States, H.L.Tobing and Minar T. Rony. This book addresses the meanings of family stories and artifacts within a gendered and interimperial context, and demonstrates how these knowledges can produce alternate cartographies of memory and belonging within the diaspora. It thus explores how women's memorykeeping forges integrative possibility, not only physically across islands, oceans, and continents, but also temporally, across decades, empires, and generations. Thirty-five years in the making, The Memorykeepers is the first book on Indonesian Americans written within the fields of US history, American Studies, and Asian American Studies.
See inside the book.
Contents
Acknowledgments
List of Illustrations
Note on Orthography and Names
Introduction: Daughter of a Daughter: the Labor of Memorykeeping
1 Questions
2 The 'Indonesian American' Context
3 'Return' and 'Belonging'
Part 1: Empire and Gender
1 Empires:Interimperialism, Migration, and the United States
1 Introduction
2 When Empires Came to You: the Toba Batak
3 Multilingualism and Interimperial Temporality
4 The United States Cold War
5 Conclusion
2 Gendered Knowledges:Patriarchies and the Politics of Belonging
1 Introduction
2 The Toba Batak Culture as Political Location
3 Colonial Domesticity
4 Converging Gender Hierarchies
5 Negotiation and Challenge
6 Conclusion
Part 2: Curating Time
3 Stories and Silences: Telling the Past
1 Introduction
2 Searching for Archives
3 What Is Said
4 What Is Not Said
5 Two Pictures
6 Conclusion
4 Artifacts and Memories: Representing Meaning
1 Introduction
2 Knowledge as Legacy
3 Memorykeeping as Response to Precarity
4 The Labor of Artifacts
5 Conclusion
Part 3: Memorykeeping
Prologue to Part 3: A Journey and a Path
5 Across Empires: The Narrative of H.L. Tobing
1 Raja Pontas
2 The Old Times
3 Family
4 The Adat
5 Christianity
6 Tarutung
7 Living in the Village
8 Dutch Rule
9 Elementary School
10 Salatiga
11 Early Marriage
12 Semarang
13 Magetan
14 Pearaja
15 Bengkalis
16 Japanese Occupation and World War II
17 Kisaran
18 Medan
19 Progress
20 Opportunities
21 United States
22 Homecoming
6 For Those Who Follow: The Autobiography of Minar T. Rony
1 Beginnings
2 Bengkalis
3 Siantar
4 Return to Bengkalis
5 Bukit Batu
6 Pearaja
7 Jakarta
8 Return to Siantar
9 Medan
10 Teacher and Guide
11 The United States
Conclusion: The Urgency of Time
Timeline
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
