While Richard Wright's account of the 1955 Bandung Conference has been key to shaping Afro-Asian historical narratives, Indonesian accounts of Wright and his conference attendance have been largely overlooked. Indonesian Notebook contains myriad documents by Indonesian writers, intellectuals, and reporters, as well as a newly recovered lecture by Wright, previously published only in Indonesian. Brian Russell Roberts and Keith Foulcher introduce and contextualize these documents with extensive background information and analysis, showcasing the heterogeneity of postcolonial modernity and underscoring the need to consider non-English language perspectives in transnational cultural exchanges. This collection of primary sources and scholarly histories is a crucial companion volume to Wright's The Color Curtain.     " 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 "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 Brian Russell Roberts is Associate Professor of English at Brigham Young University and the author of Artistic Ambassadors: Literary and International Representation of the New Negro Era .  Keith Foulcher is Honorary Associate in the Department of Indonesian Studies at the University of Sydney and the coeditor of Clearing a Space: Postcolonial Readings of Modern Indonesian Literature .   Indonesian Notebook A Sourcebook on Richard Wright and the Bandung Conference By Brian Russell Roberts, Keith Foulcher Duke University Press Copyright © 2016 Duke University Press All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-8223-6066-7 Contents Acknowledgments, Abbreviations, Bibliography of Translated and Republished Sources, On the Translations, On Spelling and Personal Names, INTRODUCTION. Richard Wright on the Bandung Conference, Modern Indonesia on Richard Wright, Part I. Transnational Crosscurrents, ONE. The Indonesian Embassy's Cultural Life of Indonesia (Excerpts) (1951), TWO. Pramoedya Ananta Toer's "The Definition of Literature and the Question of Beauty" (1952), THREE. S. M. Ardan's "Pramoedya Heads Overseas" (1953), FOUR. De Preangerbode's Review of The Outsider (1954), FIVE. Beb Vuyk's "Stories in the Modern Manner" (1955), Part II. An Asian-African Encounter, SIX. A Sheaf of Newspaper Articles: Richard Wright in Indonesia's Daily Press (1955), SEVEN. Mochtar Lubis's "A List of Indonesian Writers and Artists" (1955), EIGHT. Gelanggang's "A Conversation with Richard Wright" (1955), NINE. Konfrontasi's "Synopsis" of Wright's "American Negro Writing" (1955), TEN. Richard Wright's "The Artist and His Problems" (1955), ELEVEN. Anas Ma'ruf's "Richard Wright in Indonesia" (1955), Part III. In the Wake of Wright's Indonesian Travels, TWELVE. Beb Vuyk's "Black Power" (1955), THIRTEEN. Beb Vuyk's "H. Creekmore and Protest Novels" (1955), FOURTEEN. Asrul Sani's "Richard Wright: The Artist Turned Intellectual" (1956), FIFTEEN. Frits Kandou's "Richard Wright's Impressions of Indonesia" (1956), SIXTEEN. Beb Vuyk's "A Weekend with Richard Wright" (1960), SEVENTEEN. Goenawan Mohamad's "Politicians" (1977), EIGHTEEN. Seno Joko Suyono's "A Forgotten Hotel" (2005), AFTERWORD. Big History, Little History, Interstitial History: On the Tightrope between Polyvocality and Lingua Franca, Works Cited, Index, CHAPTER 1 The Indonesian Embassy's Cultural Life of Indonesia (Excerpts) (1951) In 1951, the Indonesian Embassy in Washington, DC, published a booklet titled The Cultural Life of Indonesia: Religion, t