The World of Nyai, the World of Sorrow

The world of nyai, a concubine or mistress of a European man, is a world of sorrow. There has been a kind of memory erasure, systematic or natural.

December 15, 2010

Nyai & Concubinage in the Netherlands East Indies
Author: Reggie Baay
Translator: Siti Hertini Adiwoso
Publisher: Komunitas Bambu, Jakarta, 2010
Pages: 297 pp + xx

Pernyaian or concubinage is generally a life full of imbalanced relations between a foreign male and a native woman which eventually produced an Indo (of mixed Indonesian and European blood) generation. Even though such relationships have produced a number of descendants, such

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