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Document Details : Title: 'Going native' Subtitle: Beb Vuyk en het verlangen naar een Indonesische identiteit Author(s): PRAAMSTRA, Olf Journal: Spiegel der Letteren Volume: 58 Issue: 1 Date: 2016 Pages: 43-81 DOI: 10.2143/SDL.58.1.3157069 Abstract : Beb Vuyk created an image of herself as someone who at an early stage distanced herself from colonial relationships and turned against her compatriots in favour of the Indonesian population. She did this in particular in interviews. Therefore she took a unique position in her own words in the literature of the Dutch East Indies. This image was repeated and confirmed by the biography Bert Scova Righini published about her in 2005. A postcolonial analysis of her work, however, reveals that Vuyk adopts a remarkably chameleonic attitude towards the colonial Dutch East Indies and post-colonial Indonesia. This is particularly evident in what she writes about her life on Buru, an island she visited four times in greatly varying conditions. The explanation for this must be sought in her mixed Dutch-Indonesian descent, with which she could never reconcile. Eventually, nowhere did she feel at home, neither in the Netherlands, nor in the Dutch East Indies, nor in Indonesia. |
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