Review: Indonesia, Etc.: Exploring the Improbable Nation

Indonesia, Etc.: Exploring the Improbable Nation by Elizabeth Pisani
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An interesting introductory overview to Indonesia from a Westerner's perspective. This book is primarily an account of the sabbatical year Pisani took traveling throughout the country around 2012 and her interactions with the locals, with occasional flashbacks to moments from previous trips up to 20 years before during her work as Reuters foreign correspondent and HIV/AIDS health worker. What results is a fairly entertaining and informative read- just enough to be accessible to anyone unfamiliar with the country and its history and culture.

Of course, much of Pisani's observations are colored by her point of view as an outsider- as can be seen in the offhand comments she sometimes makes about some traditions and customs, with her tendency to not-so-subtly insert her own opinions of what proper behavior should be. It can feel a little judgmental at times, like she's trying to impose Western understandings of morality and social behavior on peoples who have no conception of such things.

But then again, the converse is also true too. The opinions of many of the locals she meets makes Pisani herself seem open-minded and accepting in comparison, and the inter-island-traveler perspective that she brings enables her to see past the biases and racist attitudes that they often exhibit. And quite frankly, as explained in the book, many aspects of Indonesian society and politics are just plain contradictory or illogical in nature (the "sacred sex mountain" of Gunung Kemukus comes to mind), so her exasperated reactions are not unwarranted. The manner in which the author goes out of her way to experience indigenous lifestyles and still keep in touch with people she’s met years after the fact, often to her own personal inconvenience, is admirable enough in itself, so one can’t fault her for not trying to understand Indonesian culture; she does so perhaps moreso than most people ever could.

That said, Pisani herself acknowledges that for all the time that she spends trying to live like and among the locals, there is still a great deal about Indonesia that she will never actually know. It's all encapsulated in the typical blasé Indonesian response to the many questions she asks throughout the book: Begitulah. "That's just the way it is." Not everyone is happy with the status quo, but for the vast majority of Indonesians, it is a reality that they have to live with.

Although her writing does read like a backpacker’s travel diary much of the time, it also is conscious of the importance and influence of history and is surprisingly detailed when it comes to explaining it, while doing a good job of contextualizing it within her own experiences. Some of her concluding analyses, such as those regarding the nature of political corruption and the relationship between "religious" violence and economics, probably could have used more formal academic treatment or direct sources given how they’re almost presented as fact here, but I guess that partly reflects the mixed nature of this book as both travelogue and pseudo-history-textbook. Then again, I’m not sure how many English sources there are available currently about Indonesia- I get the impression that this book may be one of a few.

Speaking personally, this book was pretty eye-opening and new to me despite the fact that I've probably traveled to Indo more times in my life than any other country, although much of Pisani's descriptions of local attitudes, the cultural atmosphere, the beauty, the corruption and incompetence, the contradictions, it all felt very familiar. I can empathize with her sentiment here, of the country feeling like one giant Bad Boyfriend: "just when you think you are really getting to know it, it reveals some hidden secret, or reinvents itself completely... you know full well it will all end in tears, and yet you keep coming back for more."