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The Most Gentle People is a mixed-race coming-of-age story about growing up Indonesian and Indonesia growing up. We cannot understand ourselves without understanding history, and we cannot understand history without understanding Indonesia.

 

Note: Draft Cover Art

Overview

THE MOST GENTLE PEOPLE is a hybrid memoir and historical narrative about growing up Indonesian and Indonesia growing up. Weaving personal reflection, journalistic investigation, and cultural criticism, this book emulates Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings, Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me, and Olivia Laing’s Everybody.

My family has its fingerprints all over Indonesia, as politicians, civil servants, business leaders, law enforcement, and even as members of a CIA-backed rebellion. Growing up, I attended an elite international school where the fruits of colonial society remained ripe. As I struggled to recognize the difference between popularity and White validation, I failed to register the context behind Indonesia’s complex present. This ignorance was shattered when my grandfather—a respected diplomat—passed away.

His passing coincides with the implosion of the rest of my life. I suffer workplace abuse, addiction, and sabotage my relationship with my college sweetheart. These developments and more propel me to reflect on how I have misunderstood and contributed to the erasure of Indonesian culture and history. I connect and parallel each hurdle with Indonesia’s invisible past—from the Dutch slave markets of colonial Batavia to the U.S.-backed genocide of 1965. THE MOST GENTLE PEOPLE illustrates that we cannot understand ourselves without understanding history, and that we cannot understand history without understanding Indonesia.

I’ve spent the last decade observing the levers of power in the United States. First, as a university student in D.C., and then as the right-hand to various dealmakers in New York. Throughout, I witnessed the same dynamics unfold as I had back home. Domestically, America treats its minorities as subjects, not citizens, as the Dutch did with “Natives” in Indonesia. Overseas, the U.S. has recreated the colonial world order with itself at the head of the table. These themes, relevant to both an Indonesian and American audience, resonate throughout THE MOST GENTLE PEOPLE.

What’s the Latest on My Book?

The manuscript is complete and ready.

Interested in publishing it? Please contact me: dakotasinder8@gmail.com.

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