Category: Reading Baca
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Impurity
Thanks to Day, Mirna, Gita, and Bella for watching and discussing this movie with me. Cleaners (2019), directed by Glenn Barit, tells some slices of everyday life among Filipino high-schoolers in early 2000s. Weaving four separate yet connected mini-stories, the movie offers bitter-sweet, nostalgic youth of friendship and love, with sprinkles of politics, that allows…
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Fragments Incarnate
Pedro Páramo is a thundering grandeur. Non-linear narrative; yes, please. Population of characters who are conscious of their alienation; served. Latin-American literature through its history knows what to do with estrangement. (The last novel I read was Macedonio Fernández’s The Museum of Eterna’s Novel and I still remember the imaginary fireworks surrounding myself as I…
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dari meja pembaca
Sudah cukup lama saya menanggalkan kepercayaan bahwa membaca hanyalah untuk bersenang-senang. Apapun yang sedang saya lakukan sekarang adalah soal berusaha menjadi konsisten, mempertahankan kedisplinan sebagai kerja politik, terus menemui penulis dan buku dari berbagai tempat, bercakap-cakap dengan mereka melalui ruang imajiner, sekaligus berkonfrontasi dengan bahasa dan tulisan. Ada banyak hal di luar buku, bahasa, dan…
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Ilham Rukiah
Saya menulis bagian pendek ini ketika saya sedang melakukan studi kecil-kecilan tentang penyair perempuan “Angkatan ’45” dan berpikir tentang laku puitik penyair perempuan. Hasil akhir studi itu adalah tulisan di situs Tengara tentang sajak-sajak Siti Nuraini yang sejauh ini tersebar di berbagai antologi puisi. Namun, ketika saya berpikir tentang Nuraini, saya sekaligus melihat kembali beberapa…
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Closure Enough
Paintings may allure loneliness. But how dare one is to confront? Mina Loy’s Insel begins with a moment of encountering a friendship (or not, I’m still unsure) with an artist. Narrated by Mrs. Jones, a middle-age woman who worked as a Paris representative of a New York art dealer, the novel is opened with a…
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Rhythm Out of Death
Kim Hye Soon’s Autobiography of Death, translated by Don Mee Choi, is an act of commuting to-and-fro two worlds beyond their own border: lifedeath without space, nor virgule and slash. “Death is something that storms in from of the outside. The universe inside is bigger. It’s deep. Soon you float up inside it,” says the…
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Genggam Palu Kecil Itu
Entah sudah berapa lama kepala saya selalu berkutat dengan teknik dan cara menulis esai/ulasan/kritik, atau apapun itu yang dapat dikategorikan dalam payung perbacotan non-fiksi. Mungkin karena saya tidak bisa menulis fiksi, akhirnya saya mencoba untuk membicarakan fiksi sedikit lebih serius a.k.a. mencari cara bagaimana mencampur aduk selera pribadi, penilaian artistik, dan pengamatan konteks, lalu menuliskannya.…
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until now, tenderness
for my persons who make and read poems Once upon an evening, I felt brave. It was two days before the day of celebrating romance in February. I opened the door of my small rented place in Kalibata, welcoming two girls I really like and adore so much, D and B. I’ve befriended D since…
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Burn It
Talking about fandom and idol culture can be awkward. Mainstream media either will praise or curse, or call it with anything: a distraction, the spiralling down of parasocial interaction, blablabla. So many things happening within the culture that even when someone look it from inside, they cannot entirely comprehend. But a humane story is not…
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Brawling
It’s a room full of silence and repressed scream. Lee Soho’s poetry collection, Catcalling, translated dazzingly by So J. Lee pulls me to that room. The book starts with Kyungjin’s room and an origin of sisterhood: “I was born but somehow you were born too. From one to two. We crumple ourselves into the cramped…
Nik Setiadarma 