Indonesian Notebook

"An invaluable guide to Richard Wright and to a transnational American studies with new geographical coordinates. Gathering together the documents—Indonesian and Dutch as well as English—written before, during, and after Wright's participation in the 1955 Bandung Conference, Brian Russell Roberts and Keith Foulcher go behind and beyond The Color Curtain, giving us a fresh window on a key historical moment."  - Wai Chee Dimock, Yale University

"In this groundbreaking account of Richard Wright and Bandung, Brian Russell Roberts and Keith Foulcher advance in fresh and unexpected ways our conversations on the postcoloniality of black histories in the West and the tangled legacies of white supremacy in Asian and African colonialism. Indonesian Notebook's rich layering of Indonesian sources makes this book an indispensable addition to Wright scholarship and reminds us that the quest for equality must confront the stubborn local socioeconomic realities throughout the globe."  - Amritjit Singh, Langston Hughes Professor of English, Ohio University

"This notebook is a tour de force of comparative literary and cross-cultural historical interpretation. Through meticulous scholarship and lucid commentaries Brian Russell Roberts and Keith Foulcher pioneer an innovative approach to Indonesian and African American literatures without reference to cores, peripheries, canons, or English as anything other than a useful lingua franca. This brilliant book demonstrates why scholarly collaboration does the best job of excavating lost interactions between people, cultures, and languages during the big events of planetary history."  - Tony Day, Associate Senior Fellow, ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore

"Roberts and Foulcher have used impeccable literary historical scholarship in producing a book that maps new territory for studies of Richard Wright’s life, works, and prophetic acumen. Indonesian Notebook is exceptionally valuable for anyone, including political scientists and historians, who is interested in what world literature created during the Cold War period actually challenges us to interpret." - Jerry W. Ward, Jr., Project on the History of Black Writing

"Indonesian Notebook fills out the broader picture of Wright and the conference. It performs a valuable service ... and should encourage further scholarly digging in locales and languages affected by the conference." - Jason Parker, Journal of American History

"In U.S. histories, the meanings of the term the Third World is often rendered as stable. Non-American actors, too, sometimes remain only a spectral presence. By insisting that Indonesian intellectuals and Wright co-produced a different kind of Bandung spirit, Indonesian Notebook instead underscores the contingencies of what one historian rightly calls “the complex and uneven geographies of the postcolonial cold war world.” In doing so it can help us begin to reimagine the politics, and the poetics, of the Third World." - Mark Philip Bradley, Modern American History

"Rigorously researched and beautifully composed." - Taomo Zhou, Southeast Asian Studies

"Indonesian Notebook . . . performs a valuable service." - Jason Parker, Journal of American History

“Indonesian Notebook presents a quite unique amalgam of materials that will be of use to graduate and faculty researchers in the field (who will find materials drawn from hard-to-reach sources), and a sourcebook that will work in the advanced undergraduate classroom as an embodiment of the richness of post-colonial studies.” - Guy Reynolds, Griot

"Roberts and Foulcher have provided an important and nuanced exploration of tensions that underlie transnational networks." - Su Lin Lewis, New Books Asia