The situation of the Indonesian Chinese gets close attention -- encouraged to change their names to Indonesian-sounding ones, even to abandon their traditional religion (Suharto imposed a ban, now lifted, on the observance of Chinese religion in public), and even today still subject to unpredictable attacks.
The book is organized in three chunks, covering Sukarno's era, then Suharto's, and finally the post-Suharto years. The colonial, and earlier, history of what Europeans once referred to as "the Spice Islands" is also there, but, like so much else, interleaved between other things.
Among the Indonesian characteristics the book covers are its huge geographical extent and diversity, its consequent vulnerability to break-away movements or demands for regional autonomy, and the power of the supernatural -- notably the quasi-shamanistic Javanese puppet theater -- over the minds of its leaders.
Reading Indonesian Destinies is like riding a rollercoaster or looking into a kaleidoscope. You never know what to expect around the next bend or after the next shake of the tube. For a sample, take a look between pages 212 and 218 at the extraordinary story of Gordon Bishop, a New York City "poet, businessman and journalist" in the section entitled (in an allusion to Mark Twain) "Manhattan Yankee at the Sultan's Court." It's vivid, startling, undogmatic, and highly evocative of the entire paradoxical country.
At the heart of this impressive book lies Theodore Friend's vision that it's the ordinary comforts of life that people need most, things which warm and nourish the soul. By this he means security of home, respect of friends, the feel of a pair of comfortable old shoes and the freedom to smile at your neighbor even though he practices different rituals. Deprive people of these and they're in danger of acting like barbarians, and no one is born a barbarian. This feels like the author's philosophy, and as you read this book you slowly come to understand that it characterizes every page.
Above everything else, Friend clearly adores being in Indonesia. Asia is full of foreigners who've found some corner of the continent that constitutes a spiritual home. Not everyone arrives consciously looking for it, bit it's amazing how many succeed in finding one.
This is a generous, sad, guardedly hopeful, but above all else genially sympathetic book. There are many intriguing photographs, and the book has been sumptuously produced by Harvard University's Belknap Press.
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