19 May New article by Rosemarijn Hoefte in Acta Neerlandica

‘Orang-kontrak: De verbeelding van Javaanse contractarbeiders in Suriname en Deli’, Acta Neerlandica 12 (2016): 145-71.

In a special issue of Acta Neerlandica on Hungarians in the Dutch colonies, Rosemarijn Hoefte compares the literary representations of Javanese contract labourers in Suriname and Deli (Sumatra). Novels depicting the life of planters and workers, such as Madelon Székely-Lulofs’s Rubber or Koelie on Deli, are not part of the Surinamese literary canon. Instead, she uses contemporary books and articles as well as later stories and novels by authors of Surinamese descent, including Bea Vianen, Cynthia McLeod, and Karin Amatmoekrim, in which Javanese history and culture in Suriname are sketched. In contrast to Deli, in Surinamese prose the indentured labour system was only questioned in the postcolonial period.