Women writing wayang in post-reform indonesia: A comparative study of fictional interventions in mythology and national history

Abstract

This chapter examines how three contemporary Indonesian women writers engage with Hindu-Javanese wayang mythology in their literary work. The wayang shadow puppetry performance genre and storytelling tradition holds a special place in the popular imagination in Indonesia, and therefore offers rich potential for critical intertextual engagement. Focusing on novels by Laksmi Pamuntjak, Leila Chudori and Ayu Utami, I show how wayang epics function as a productive site of counter-discourse for authors attempting to intervene in dominant narratives of history and gender. These authors all seek to reimagine histories of violence in Indonesia, particularly the 1965–66 anti-communist mass killings, and they combine this reassessment of official national history with a redefinition of ideal gender roles. Wayang mythology plays a central role in each of their projects, sometimes as an object of critique, and other times as a source of alternative gender models. By comparing their literary engagements with wayang, I demonstrate how each author contests or reinforces prevailing notions of feminine and masculine identity in contemporary Indonesia, and how such representations are deeply entwined with narratives of history and nation. Ultimately, I reveal some of the limits to forging alternative histories and gender representations in Indonesian literature and contemporary public debate.