Dias Novita Wuri makes her Stateside debut with Birth Canal, labeled a novella but more accurately a quartet of interlinked stories. Her haunting depictions of women surviving in different decades, countries, and situations--in a self-translated collection that adds up to a spare 160 pages--present a disturbing outlook on what happens in a world predominantly controlled by men. Wuri, a native Indonesian with a British education who is all too aware of colonial history, nimbly uses vivid storytelling to expose the vicious perils of domination and occupation.
Each story bears a woman's name. In "Nastiti," an unnamed male narrator in Jakarta reveals the complicated fate of his childhood friend; his unrequited love for her will ruin his relationship with his longtime fiancée. In "Rukmini," Nastiti's flight attendant mother, Arini, leaves Nastiti a note that she will be in Holland for a few days, where a Dutch researcher interviews Arini about her mother Rukmini's brutal sexual enslavement by the Japanese military. Fast forward to "Hana," in which two military men--one Japanese, one American--recall war and its aftermath. Dara, the discarded Jakartan fiancée from "Nastiti," now enduring a loveless, childless marriage in Osaka, becomes obsessed with a porn star, dead by suicide. Wuri deftly manipulates points of view, shrewdly deciding who gets to tell whose story--ones about the consequences of casual sex as disclosed by a wannabe lover, a Dutch interviewer recording an Indonesian's wartime tragedies, a rapist justifying his heinous crime. That Wuri's name, however, appears on the book's cover reads like a victorious reclamation of these tragic histories and contemporary consequences. In writing, Wuri commands authorial agency. --Terry Hong, BookDragon