M.J. Tjia

Hard on the heels of The Idealist, Nicholas José's new novel set in 1990s East Timor, (2023, see my review) comes another historical novel set in our region... Like The Idealist Mirandi Riwoe's Sunbirds is set in the turbulent period shortly before decolonisation, but her novel is set during WW2 on the Indonesian island of Java which had been a Dutch colony for 300 years.

The novel begins with Riwoe's central character Anna van Hoorn on board an evacuation flight to an uncertain future in Australia. The flight is for the wives of the Dutch colonialists in Sundanese West Java, and her entitlement to be on that flight is ambiguous because (a) she's not yet married to Mattjis Huuisman, a Dutch pilot, and (b) because she's Indo (Eurasian, see note below). Although her father Theodor is a Dutch tea planter, her mother Hermine is upper-caste Indo with an aristocratic Dutch ancestor. Those of us who know the history of Australia's infamous White Australia policy know that the first steps towards abolishing it didn't happen until 1966 under Harold Holt, and it was not finally abolished until 1973 under Gough Whitlam. So (although there is a tie-up-the-ends epilogue set 50 years later) I wouldn't be surprised if a sequel to Sunbirds about the intervening years began with an unfriendly refugee experience in Australia for Anna.

I'm open to correction on this, but from reading Pramoedya's Buru Quartet, it's my recollection that the legal status of inter-racial (i.e. Dutch/Eurasian) marriages was cloudy under Dutch law. In Footsteps (1985), Annalies, Minke's first Indo (Eurasian) wife, loses her citizenship after ‘repatriation to the Netherlands, in order to prevent her inheriting Javanese assets from her Dutch father. So the letter from Mattjis that Anna is clutching may be worthless as far as immigration authorities are concerned.

OTOH in a rare show of an independent foreign policy, Australia supported postwar Indonesian independence, against the Dutch, and Indonesian soldiers and administrations officials who had come to Australia with the Dutch government-in-exile, were supported by Australians when they rebelled and became freedom-fighters for independence. But that was after the war, not in 1942 when Anna takes that flight reserved for Dutch women.

But that's not the only complication that arises from this intriguing novel...

It's not just that other members of Anna's family are still in the path of the rapidly advancing Japanese, there are other interesting characters whose fate merits a sequel covering the intervening 50 years in Indonesia. Anna's family has had, for a long time, a faithful family servant called Diah, an attractive woman whose presence enrages Anna's mother Hermine (who has mental health issues). Diah has a handsome brother called Sigit who is involved in the emerging independence movement, a movement which took the opportunity to sabotage Dutch interests in anticipation of a Japanese Occupation which they thought would be supportive of independence ambitions. (It didn't take long for them to become disillusioned about that. The Japanese did not have a sense of brotherhood with other Asian people, and they brutalised the locals in all the places they occupied.)

Anna, still not twenty-one, is being married off by her father because he wants to ensure social acceptance for her with a Dutch husband. His concern about her acceptance into society is also the reason why he won't let her get involved in what amounts to 'war work' (e.g. nursing) with other Dutch women: their social acceptance is their entitlement and that status automatically means that their work is 'charity work'. But a Eurasian woman doing the same thing looks like work that a servant might do, and Anna's parents are united in their insistence that she must not be perceived as a kampung Indo. Anna is under constant parental scrutiny to make sure that she doesn't compromise her chances.

But although they are engaged, both Anna and Mattjis have #noSpoilers developed other interests which arise when they are parted...

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/10/10/sunbirds-2023-by-mirandi-riwoe/… (meer)