‘Unsilencing’ Chinese Indonesians through Children's Literature

This study investigates children's books published after the collapse in 1998 of an authoritarian regime in Indonesia that spanned more than three decades. During these years, Indonesians with Chinese ancestry were silenced from expressing their culture, tradition, and language in public. A dichotomy between Chinese Indonesians and the ‘indigenous’ Indonesians was also employed as a political strategy that resulted in negative stereotypes of the ethnic group that persist long after the regime's demise. As the current post-authoritarian government attempts to reinstate Chinese Indonesians’ rights in observing their culture, children's literature in the country is also embracing this ethnic group. This article employs a critical multicultural reading to examine the representation of Chinese Indonesians across a range of picturebooks and middle-grade novels.