Book Review: Bijl, P., & Chin, G. V. S. (Eds.). (2020). Appropriating Kartini: Colonial, National and Transnational Memories of an Indonesian Icon.

This book dicusses the national, regional, and transnational appropriations of Kartini – a young Javanese woman who lived in Jepara, Central Java, between 1879 and 1904. She is recognised internationally as an iconic feminist and nationalist Indonesian figure and is, after Anne Frank, the most widely-read and influential, (originally) Dutch-language author worldwide in the 20th and 21st centuries. Since 1911, her letters, first published in Dutch as “Door duisternis tot licht” (lit. “Through Darkness Into Light”), have been translated into numerous languages including French, Russian, Japanese, Javanese, Sundanese, and Arabic. There are also several versions of Indonesian and English translations. In the 1960s, a republication of the first 1920 English language translation of a selection of her writings was included in the UNESCO Collection of Representative Works.

Abstract licence: CC BY-NC-ND

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