Khairani Barokka Bücher

Khairani Barokka's second poetry collection is an intricate exploration of colonialism and environmental injustice: her acute, interlaced language draws clear connections between colonial exploitation of fellow humans, landscapes, animals, and ecosystems. Amidst the horrifying damage that has resulted for peoples as interlinked with places, there is firm resistance. Resonant and deeply attentive, the lyricism of these poems is juxtaposed with the traumatic circumstances from which they emerge. Through these defiant, potent verses, the body--particularly the disabled body--is centred as an ecosystem in its own right. Barokka's poems are every bit as alarming, urgent and luminous as is necessary in the age of climate catastrophe as outgrowth of colonial violence.

"A ballad about wounded islands and their people, Indigenous Species reminds me of an old song, the kind our village storytellers used to sing. It has a fairytale quality, setting a dreamlike world alongside the horror of real lives; in other words, it's like a lullaby, but one that will make you stay awake." -- Eka Kurniawan, author of Beauty is a Wound A young girl is abducted and smuggled aboard a boat bound upstream on an Indonesian river, through a landscape scarred by ecological destruction and historical greed. As her captors take her ever deeper into the jungle, her uncertain fate is compounded by the sense of her environment as a place of violence, destruction and jeopardy. But it is also a place from which she herself is indigenous, and if she can root herself back into its landscape and languages, she may yet save herself. Khairani Barokka addresses issues of pollution, consumerism, and habitat destruction with a poet's sensibility, and her frenetic neon artwork, inspired by contemporary glitch artists while also incorporating traditional motifs, aims to overturn our ideas of the jungle as a place of threatening darkness.

This experimental creative non-fiction explores the intersection of art and colonial ableism, delving into the struggles faced by marginalized voices. It emphasizes the importance of reclaiming one's spirit and identity in the face of societal challenges, weaving together personal narratives and broader cultural critiques. The work invites readers to reflect on the impact of colonialism on art and the resilience required to overcome these obstacles.

amuk sheds light on the devastating and ongoing effects of a single word's mistranslation, and emphasises what exists in opposition to such hostile histories and presents: hope, resistance, and joy.