WAW Recommends: Saman by Ayu Utami

Saman by Ayu Utami
translated by Pamela Allen
recommended by Bronwyn Mauldin

Saman is the story of how a Catholic priest in the world’s most populous Muslim country, Indonesia, becomes a human rights activist called “Saman.” Author, journalist Ayu Utami, turns the familiar tale of the crusader for justice on its head by folding Saman’s story into that of a group of young women who knew him when they were school girls and he a newly-ordained priest.

Laila is the good girl who always falls for men she cannot have. Shakuntala the dancer who breaks her name in two for an American grant. Cok the bad girl exiled by her family. Yasmin the serious attorney trapped in a dull marriage. As these girls grow up and explore their sexual identities, the priest comes into his own, and with their help, is reborn.

The story unfolds in layers, spanning the globe from one former Dutch colony (Indonesia) to another (New York), in only 180 pages. We read the story through several points of view, and through narrative, letters and emails. Watch for small details casually dropped along the way, as they add up to a powerful tale that is as much about the diversity of modern Indonesia as it is about any one person’s search for justice and freedom.

You can buy Saman at Skylight Books.

Advertisement

WAW Recommends: The Age of Dreaming by Nina Revoyr

The Age of Dreaming by Nina Revoyr
Recommended by Cheryl Klein

Over the course of three novels, Nina Revoyr has chronicled girl basketball players, civil unrest in Watts, and now the silent film era: The Age of Dreaming is the story of Jun Nakayama, a Japanese American star of the silents who—when a new part comes his way for the first time in decades—is forced to reflect on the abrupt end of his career. The reasons are as scandalous as an unsolved murder and as subtle as the growing anti-Japanese sentiments he tried to brush off.

The through-line that draws me to Revoyr’s work again and again—besides her insider’s renderings of Los Angeles—is her depiction of characters who are reluctantly shaken out of their passivity. It’s easy enough to write about characters who are brave or even tragic, but it takes serious skill to write about polite, reserved people whose very nature defies the nature of plot.

Over the course of the novel, which flashes between the ’20s and the ’60s, Jun realizes that society doesn’t reward patience and compliance the way he’d hoped, but that he has more control of his own fate than he once thought.

Revoyr’s prose in this novel are like Jun himself: simple but elegant, contemplative and—at first glance—almost dry. But this is all part of a carefully layered character portrait, and the thoroughly juicy mystery at the novel’s center, coupled with descriptions of Hollywood in its giddy adolescence, keep the pages turning.

You can buy The Age of Dreaming of Skylight Books