Badass Women in Supernatural Un-Feminist World {Indonesia}

Beauty is a Wound | Eka Kurniawan

3.5/5 stars

Eka Kurniawan was only in his 20s when he wrote “Cantik Itu Luka” (which was later translated from Indonesian to English by Annie Tucker as “Beauty is a Wound”). While he grew up during Suharto’s turbulent and anti intellectual reign, the book was published when Indonesia had sprung out of its shell to become what it is today. 

It is a supernatural tale of Dewi Ayu, the generations after her and the ones before her. Although the Author insists that the history of Indonesia is a mere backdrop, key historic events are not only intricately woven with the fate of Dewi Ayu, but are strikingly similar.

But let me be honest here. The Indonesian language is gruff (which is my perception of speaking it a little and living in the country for 2 years) I just don’t find it poetic or lyrical like Hindi, or even English. And this seems to be carried over to the English Translation. 

(C’mon, the words for no, nose, face & baby sling are TIDAK, HIDUNG, WAJAH & GANDONG! Didn’t really require caps lock to emphasise though..)

And it’s not just the language. The material itself is mildly crass, uncouth, and difficult to read through the rapes, prostitution and incest. You may or may not cringe with the authors obsession with shit. For e.g. “the midwife assisting her couldn’t be sure whether it really was a baby and thought that maybe it was a pile of shit”. 

Yes. You read that correctly!

I paused every now & then, exasperated and wondering why people loved the book. I then realised that what kept me going one tragic event after another, was that the author didn’t really pause and dwell over them.

It would be something as shocking as “the dogs ate the baby.” But before you dilated your pupils and dropped your jaws long enough, you moved on to the next part. Very Wayang Puppet show inspired,. Serious, yet playful.

Another reason why I kept going was because of the week I was having. It was the week I stumbled into a podcast about a young Pakistani girl talking about her clitorectomy (now THAT was really hard to listen), the Game of Thrones season finale & Laverne Cox teaching her ‘students’ about the female anatomy (on Orange is the New Black S2). 

Let’s say by the time I got to this book, I was sufficiently desensitised to cruise to the end of the book! And although a difficult read I was strangely satisfied with the book once I finished it.

The family tree (You may need it!)

What I absolutely *LOVED* was Dewi Ayu’s character, who was SO badass! She took things in her stride, and would face every tragedy flung in her face with as much pragmatism as humanly possible. Not the type to sit and wallow, she in fact did whatever she could to make the best out of the situation. 

But the daughters? Ummm, not so much. It is difficult to digest that they just accepted their fate without a decent fight. (Fatalism *is* what I encountered during my stay in Indonesia anyway). Or Perhaps the author for some reason just became too stingy, in spite of inviting us to be part of their lives for pages & pages.

Ghosts, rebirths, predictions and babies vanishing from the wombs- There is a fair amount of magic realism too tangling the stories together! The book literally starts with “One afternoon on a weekend in March, Dewi Ayu rose from her grave after being dead for twenty-one years”

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Related: While the world is confounded and wary of the world 'feminism', an Indonesian woman gets tangled wiggling through life’s hurdle race! Here's her story.  

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