Place of publication: United States, Ann Arbor; ISBN=978-1-321-05551-1
M.F.A.
Creative Writing
Saint Mary's College of California
2014
In the summer of 2012, I returned to Indonesia, my home country, to do a research on drag performers in three major cities: Jakarta, Jogjakarta, and Denpasar. In Indonesia, the lives of drag performers are inseparable from gay clubs and gay culture itself. I was fortunate to catch a glimpse of their lives, their transformations, their performance on and off the stage, and most importantly their thoughts and ideas of how the world viewed them. In Jogjakarta and Denpasar, I met and interviewed traditional cross-dress performers, and realized that Indonesia used to have a rich and ambiguous relationship with cross-dressing, gender-bending, and homosexuality. This relationship has almost been wiped out when Islam came.
American literature; Gender studies; LGBTQ studies
Language, literature and linguistics;Social sciences;Bali;Drag queen;Indonesia;Islam;Jakarta;Jogjakarta;Original writing