Javanese Gentry (Para Priyayi #1)

Umar Kayam

Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars
4.14 · 14 ratings · 398 pages · Published: 01 Jan 1992
Javanese Gentry by Umar Kayam
"In my mind rose a misty picture of a little girl in a floral dress. As for her face: nothing. I could only hope that she had been pretty. I sat overcome. What a procession of developments in one day! Only that morning I had left Madiun; at midday I was wobbling on a buggy past an ocean of rice fields; tonight, suddenly, I had been renamed by my parents and handed a wife." Thus begins Sastrodarsono's life, returning to his village as a newly- appointed schoolteacher, and by virtue of that position, a member of the "priyayi" - functionary gentry awesomely elevated above the peasantry of his origins. From those most traditional of Javanese institutions - change of name and a virtually imposed marriage-he moves on with his bride to found a line of modernizing generations active across the whole span of recent Indonesian history: the 20th century late-colonial period, Japanese occupation, war of independence and two decades of social disorder ending in the mid-1960s with the rise of Suharto's authoritarian New Order government.

The ideal of gentrification threads through this saga, both in the implicit concerns of a variety of characters and in the hopes of wretched villagers for whom the literacy necessary to approach that higher status is largely a forlorn dream.
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    The 'Para Priyayi' series

    4.14 · 14 ratings
    literary · politics · historical-fiction · adult · historical · violent-conflict · social-commentary · drama · war · literary-fiction · book · classics · fiction · spirituality
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    Javanese Gentry by Umar Kayam

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