SOURCE: GoGwilt, Chris. “The Voice of Pramoedya Ananta Toer: Passages, Interviews, and Reflections from The Mute's Soliloquy and Pramoedya's North American Tour.” Cultural Critique 55 (fall 2003): 217-46.

In the following essay, GoGwilt examines the parallels between the subject matter in The Mute's Soliloquy and Pramoedya's 1999 North American tour, marking the author's first visit outside of Indonesia in almost forty years. GoGwilt also includes an interview with Pramoedya, in which the author discusses his travels to the United States.

Following the events of 1965, I lost everything or, to be more accurate, all the illusions I had ever owned. I was a newborn child, outfitted with the only instrument a newly born babe finds necessary for life: a voice. Thus like a child my only means of communication was my voice: my screams, cries, whimpers, and yelps.

What would happen to me if my voice, my sole means of communication, were...