Thursday, May 21, 2009

Silenced Voices by Inez Hollander (review)

Like a number of Netherlanders in the post World War II era, Inez Hollander only gradually became aware that her family had significant connections with its Dutch colonial past, including an Indonesian great-grandmother. Unlike the majority of memoirs that are soaked in nostalgia for tempo doeloe, Hollander’s sets out to come to grips with her family’s past by weaving together personal records with more general, academic views of the period. Hers is a complicated and sometimes painful personal journey of realization, unusually mindful of the ways in which past memories and present considerations can be intermingled when we seek to understand a difficult past. Silenced Voices is an important contribution to the literature on how Dutch society has dealt with its recent colonial history.

More details

Silenced Voices: Uncovering a Family's Colonial History in Indonesia
By Inez Hollander
Edition: illustrated
Published by Ohio University Press, 2009
ISBN 0896802698, 9780896802698
312 pages

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