Lyrical Vengeance

On crowded dance floors at queer club nights in Tokyo, Yogyakarta and Rotterdam, ravers celebrate the lives and works of Japanese author Fumiko Hayashi, Indonesian author Suwarsih Djojopuspito and Dutch-Indonesian author Beb Vuyk.

These women challenged patriarchal and nationalist politics from the 1930s to the 1950s, a turbulent period marked by violence, war and decolonization. They wrote openly about sensitive subjects such as women’s labour, sex work and resistance to colonial and patriarchal oppression. Contemporary activists, artists and researchers engage with the authors’ literary legacies through collective reading, and performance. These local actors quote from the writers’ work and, through improvisation, enact how these women might have responded to complex situations. The writers’ artistic practice, activism and feminism resonate with the creative practices of today’s transnational queer community, connecting different ways of creating and claiming space.