Southeast Asia Spotlight

The Harvard Asia Center’s Southeast Asia Spotlight is delighted to present a weekly series of interviews featuring Harvard faculty, students, and affiliates working on the region. These interviews will feature research processes, recently published work, and other ongoing initiatives to cultivate Southeast Asian Studies at the University. 

The first feature is a conversation with Norman Erikson Pasaribu, the 2023-24 Asia Center Artist-in-Residence, a Toba Batak poet writing in Indonesian and English. Norman was in residence September 25 - October 7, 2023. This interview was conducted by Toby Wu on Norman’s last day here in Cambridge, at Faro Cafe on Arrow Street.

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“How can you remember when there is no memory?”

Norman takes a beat, recounting a recent writing residency in Germany, allowing this frank yet undefeated pause at their poetry reading at CGIS South to swell. Attempting to conduct research on German missionary activity in the Toba Batak community in the late 19th century, Norman’s repeated inquiries had been met with blank stares and confusion. This absence of a German collective consciousness on their forceful Christianization of an Bataknese people group is startling, but perhaps unsurprising. This is the asymmetry of power relations baked into the colonial encounter—as a descendant of the Toba Batak peoples, Norman must remember and live with this history, but for everyone else recollection and reparation is optional. Norman’s words resound through the room with exceeding clarity, at once a maxim and a mandate.

Contending with the weight of colonial harm is but one of Norman’s necessary preoccupations. 

An accomplished author of three titles, Hanya Kamu yang Tahu Berapa Lama Lagi Aku Harus Menunggu [Only You Know How Much Longer I Should Wait] (2015), Sergius Mencari Bacchus: 33 Puisi (2016), translated into English as Sergius Seeks Bacchus, (trans. Tiffany Tsao, 2019), and Cerita-cerita Bahagia, Hampir Seluruhnya (2020), translated into English as Happy Stories, Mostly (trans. Tiffany Tsao, 2021), Norman has been lauded as a leading voice for queer Indonesians. Norman’s texts are suffused with “opulent sadness”, often composed through the recursive loops returned empty and unanswered. Such proclamations position Norman as somewhat of a prophet himself, able to parse through loneliness and speak truth to power.

The Southeast Asia Spotlight chats with Norman about their forthcoming English-language poetry collection, his favorite Southeast Asian writers, and what makes him happy.

Toby Wu: Could you share with us what you’ve been working on during your residency here?

Norman Erikson Pasaribu: I'm working on my next collection of poems. It’s tentatively titled “My Dream Job”. The Job in question is both jobs as employment and the Job of the Old Testament. I'm viewing the prophet Job as a queer icon, coupled with a chronology of the aftermath of losing my job in 2016 [after publishing my first collection of poems]. Thematically, I’m interested in how essential work is for the queer.

TW: Did you start writing these poems immediately after being let go in 2016?

NEP: No, the first poem was written around 2017, during my first residency in the Philippines. I never planned to write a book of poems in English, to be honest. But my experiences in international residencies, with people who speak English, compelled me to reflect about how uncanny these encounters are. Because I must travel a lot. And then there are so many uncanny experiences regarding English and how I interact with people who use it. 

SEAS: Could you remind me where you’ve traveled to for these residencies?

NEP: Aside from the Philippines, I’ve been to Vietnam, Thailand, Germany, Brussels, Australia like four times, and others I can’t recall right now. Oh yeah, the first time I was supposed to visit the US was in 2016, but my visa application was rejected by the embassy.

TW: Oh wow, so this trip has been 7 years in the works! How has being in Cambridge influenced your writing?

NEP: I’ve been reading lots of material about the prophet Job through the Harvard Libraries, buying books I can’t access in Indonesia, and meeting professors and students. I’m quite introverted, so for example like after intense events like the poetry reading, I need a lot of time alone to decompress.

TW: Yes, thank you for your reading—I was really struck by how generous you were in sharing all the difficulties you’ve had to negotiate, especially how transparent you were about your pain. Most of the time you scaffolded it with humor to make it more comfortable for the audience, but there was one moment where you didn’t conceal it, and I was very moved.

NEP: I think it's hard to control your emotions in public. Yeah, sometimes it's a question to myself—“what kind of Norman do people prefer to see?” Do they want the Norman who is funny and charming and warm? Or the Norman who is honest, but brutally sad? This is something that I still don’t know how to answer. And sometimes they want a mix of both. But I think most of the time I’m the brutally sad Norman.

TW: Haha yeah I definitely feel that.

NEP: You can’t expect people to understand. When you’ve been marginalized multiple times, as a racial minority, religious minority, working class person, it is difficult for myself to cohere these intersectional experiences because there is so much I need to say for a singular interaction. I recognize that people get scared by this density, and they choose not to ask questions.

TW: I feel that is the most generous aspect of your writing: you inculcate people into your discomfort, while still allowing them to have some comfort.

NEP: Yes, that’s basically the game. Even in the slightest hint of discomfort, people get defensive—even if this discomfort is but 1% of what people in the global south experience daily. And even then, there is no such thing as a global south experience; I feel people in the West are often expecting me to encapsulate the Southeast Asian experience, but I can only represent myself.

TW: Yes, that is ironic given that places like where we espouse hyper-individuation. I’d like to speak more about how you perceive the inextricable bond between post-colonial subjects and the West. You shared one of the poems from your forthcoming collection during the reading, entitled “A Dutch boy came to my reading, and…”, which featured 13 parallel and almost absurdist scenarios following such an encounter, based on your experiences when a Dutch person sought to mine your identity and history. What struck me the most is how you expressed the desire to refuse that relation with the Dutch person through numerous comical happenstances post-reading encounter, and how that severing of relation can be as simple as blocking them on Instagram.

NEP: Yes, to me it’s quite simple. It’s about having an innate sense of pride, and not wanting to invest in people who already associate some levels of shame with you as a post-colonial subject. My people believe that we are all descendants of God. If I’m going to make progress, it should be with good people.

TW: Speaking of such good people; are there any colleagues and writers you would recommend us read?

NEP: I translate some of Ni Made Purnamasari and Ziggy Zezsyazeoviennazabrizkie’s poems from Indonesian to English, both of them deserve more recognition. I think my friend Nhã Thuyên is one of the best poets alive today, even though she has faced a lot of resistance from her home country. From the Pacific region, I’d also say First Nations Australian writer Ellen van Neerven.

TW: I can’t wait to read their work. Now that it has been around a decade since you’ve started writing, I wonder if you can still resonate with the headspace you had when you first started? How has your disposition to writing changed?

NEP: That was definitely a happier time. My world was simpler. When I started, I was pretty much unknown; I could publish a collection of short stories and nobody would care. Then you start winning prizes, and people start making claims about the form of my writing, more people tell me that they’ve read my books. As I grow older and travel more, I feel I can perceive myself in the stage of the world, or rather where my work belongs in that, and the readership I might have.

TW: Yes, that’s really wonderful. Recognition is so important. 

NEP: It’s hard to think about success when I am still struggling, applying for fellowships. The pressure comes from both sides, when I encounter difficult situations overseas, some people back home might make comments about how I should be happy that I even have the opportunity. This is a struggle I think most people in the Global North wouldn’t immediately understand. Sometimes it feels like I have to cook with crumbs.

TW: What have you found to be useful support in developing as a writer then?

NEP: Support comes from places that you don’t expect at all? I mostly rely on my author and translator friends. However, there is often little consensus, people want different forms of liberation and equality. I feel that people who want revolution don’t really want to change things for everyone, only their personal circumstances.

TW: I apologize if this is emplacing a more Western-aligned perspective, but it strikes me that your poetry is rife with unabashed depressive episodes. Is writing a way for you to contend with depression?

NEP: I had friends who accused me of lying because of how I titled Happy Stories, Mostly. I have expressed in other interviews that these are happy stories because I am writing them instead of dying. I am not interested in writing easy to digest stories, to ask easy questions. Let’s talk about the queer who doesn't have a place in their family, neighborhood, society. Let’s talk about runaways, people who lose their jobs because of their queerness. I want to ask the harder questions that matter to me, to write books that represent myself and my friends. It angers me when readers want to perceive my book and deem it deceptively simple—it isn’t!

TW: That makes complete sense. I’m curious—what makes you feel at ease, Norman? What makes you happy now?

NEP: Oh, I feel happy whenever I teach and share what I know about writing with people, like I did in the workshop [held with Harvard affiliates]. I just want to share what I know with people, basically. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Happy Stories, Mostly is available at the Harvard Book Store.

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Friday, November 3, 2023