Jakarta Jive

Jakarta Jive: A Story of Survival in a City of Upheaval was first published in 2001.

The book looks at the collapse of Indonesia’s New Order from the perspective of Jakarta residents whose private lives were abruptly reshaped by economic crisis and political change. Rather than treating 1998 only as a sequence of national events, it follows people trying to keep households, careers, relationships and beliefs intact while the assumptions around them are coming apart.

Among its characters are a former bank executive adjusting to a reversal of family roles, a Chinese-Indonesian student confronting the violence of May 1998 through photography, and migrant workers whose obligations to families elsewhere in Indonesia continue regardless of what is happening in the capital.

The result is a close-range portrait of Reformasi at the moment it began: confusing, hopeful, frightening and deeply personal.

A combined edition of Jakarta Jive and Bali Blues was later published by YellowDot.

First publication: 2001
Original publisher: Metafor Publishing
Subject: Jakarta, Reformasi, the Asian financial crisis, everyday life during political upheaval