Women and Malay Voices examines Malay literature by Chinese peranakan authors in the Dutch East Indies between 1915 and 1940. The narratives, some of them based on sensational murder trials reported in the news, offer insights into women’s lives and experiences and glimpses of female agency. With its primary focus on Malay texts and Asian women, this book offers a unique opportunity to hear subaltern voices and understand the lives of colonized women in new ways. Using feminist and postcolonial theories, this study juxtaposes the Malay texts with Dutch fiction and newspaper accounts to gain insight into how gender, race, and class are represented and what ideologies marked power relations in Dutch East Indies society.

«Tineke Hellwig has produced a tour de force. The prolific literature in ‘lingua franca Malay’ by Chinese authors, so long neglected by the mainstream, provides an important insight into Netherlands Indies society (especially women) in a crucial period, and Hellwig’s rigorous research extends to finding contemporary Dutch reports of real events on which the texts were based, using interview material and comparisons with Dutch language texts. I hope this splendidly conceived and well-written book encourages others to use this literature to challenge the dominant colonial and nationalist historiographies.» (Charles A. Coppel, Author of ‘Indonesian Chinese in Crisis’ (1983) and ‘Studying Ethnic Chinese in Indonesia’ (2002))
«Tineke Hellwig’s ‘Women and Malay Voices: Undercurrent Murmurings in Indonesia’s Colonial Past’ uncovers the wealth of materials in ‘lingua franca Malay’ narratives from the period 1915-1938. It offers groundbreaking readings of long-neglected literary texts written by authors of Chinese descent. Exploring how gender, race, and class with all their ambiguities and contradictions intersect with power, Hellwig gives voice to marginalized women – Asian and Eurasian women accused of immoral conduct. Her method of reading Malay fiction against Dutch texts as they speak to one another within the cultural politics of the time is illuminating. This book is a must-read for students and scholars of Indonesian and postcolonial studies.» (Melani Budianta, University of Indonesia)

Tineke Hellwig is Associate Professor of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia. She received her PhD at Leiden University. Her research interests include Indonesian and Malay literature and culture, representation of women, and gender and sexuality studies. She is the author of In the Shadow of Change: Images of Women in Indonesian Literature and co-editor of Asian Women: Interconnections and The Indonesia Reader: History, Culture, Politics.