New Books In Southeast Asian Studies

To Remain Myself: The History of Onghokham (ASAA Southeast Asia Publications Series / NUS Press, 2022) is a particularly vivid biography of a remarkable individual, an Indonesian historian and public intellectual who was both a public figure and a multi-minority member, being Dutch educated, Indonesian Chinese, gay, alcoholic, irreligious and hedonist, in a conservative society. This is the first Indonesian biography where the interior life is closely recorded: the fears, doubts, confusions; the issues of sexuality, the mental breakdown, the jailing, the later success, joys and celebrity, as a historian, public intellectual and famous cook. This biography breaks out of the Indonesian Chinese category. It is primarily an Indonesian story. In its early chapters this biography reveals much about the ‘sugar king’ Chinese aristocracy of Indonesia, from the inside. In its later chapters this book shows much about the development of Indonesians writing their own post-colonial history, and the intellectual influences