To Remain Myself: The History of Onghokham

David Reeve

ISBN 10: 981325159X / ISBN 13: 9789813251595

Published by NUS Press, National university of Singapore. SINGAPORE, 2022

About this Item

x, 346pp., b/w illustrations, footnotes, figures, tables, appendix, bibliography, index. Lightly bumped corners else Fine.(BH) 9/24.

Seller Inventory # ABE-1727310516124

Bibliographic Details

• Title: To Remain Myself: The History of Onghokham
• Publisher: NUS Press, National university of Singapore. SINGAPORE
• Publication Date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 981325159X
• ISBN 13: 9789813251595
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Near Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Asian History
  • Biography
  • Indonesia

About this title

Synopsis

This 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 biography delves into its subject's interior life: 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 on this writing.

Onghokham was a senior public intellectual with over 300 writings over 50 years, containing original insights into many varied Indonesian topics, including colonial history and its effects on modern politics and society; the Indonesian Chinese; 'outsiders' -- marginal people; the jago or brigand as people's champion; sexuality in Indonesia past and present; food; the Oedipus complex; painting; traditional Javanese beliefs from the palace to the peasant.