I don't know if I know Indonesian well enough to pull that off. I moved out of the country when I was 6. Yanno, what with RaceFail still fresh in everyone's memory, it makes me wonder about the appropriation thing, and what my role is when I take source material from a culture from which I've become alienated, and source material from a culture in which I am the foreigner. It reminds me of the the backlash surrounding "Sita Sings the Blues". I want to be a storyteller, but also responsible and respectful.
Probably! There is a buttload of Sanskrit in Indonesian -- Sanskrit words, Sanskrit names (lots of girls named Sita, my name has roots in the word 'apsara', 'roti' means bread and 'puja' means worship/compliment). The Javanese script is very Sanskrit looking. And we've appropriated a lot of the stories -- the Ramayana is well-known, we have wayangs named Arjuna, etc. Soooooo much South Asian influence.
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I don't know if I know Indonesian well enough to pull that off. I moved out of the country when I was 6. Yanno, what with RaceFail still fresh in everyone's memory, it makes me wonder about the appropriation thing, and what my role is when I take source material from a culture from which I've become alienated, and source material from a culture in which I am the foreigner. It reminds me of the the backlash surrounding "Sita Sings the Blues". I want to be a storyteller, but also responsible and respectful.
Probably! There is a buttload of Sanskrit in Indonesian -- Sanskrit words, Sanskrit names (lots of girls named Sita, my name has roots in the word 'apsara', 'roti' means bread and 'puja' means worship/compliment). The Javanese script is very Sanskrit looking. And we've appropriated a lot of the stories -- the Ramayana is well-known, we have wayangs named Arjuna, etc. Soooooo much South Asian influence.