Böcker av Khairani Barokka

An experimental work of creative non-fiction functioning as a tale of art, colonialism, disability, and reclamation of the spirit through the story of a single painting by Paul GauguinAnnah, Infinite turns dominant narratives of Paul Gauguin's famous painting Annah laJavanaise (c. 1893-94) on its head. The work argues a simple point: there is the possibilitythat the portrait is a depiction of a pained child. In highlighting the plausibility of thisparticular scenario in light of how contradictory 'facts' surrounding Annah's life have beenassembled in historical narratives, the work draws attention to how ablenormativity functionswithin arts institutions to mask colonial abuses. Taking a closer look at the ways in which Annah la Javanaise, with its attendant mythologies of Annah the person or people, circulates in the world: as commodity of the global financial market, and simultaneously, as contradiction of tropes regarding disabled, Southeast Asian girls in the 'developing world'. An incisive look at how colonial ableism, racism, and sexism have kept violent legacies on museum walls, it shows empathetic possibilities for imagining otherwise and charts histories of resilience and of disabled people's longstanding activism. Interspersed with the author's own poetry, fiction, and visual art on the painting's subject, this is a book of emotional heft.

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.

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 young girl is abducted aboard a boat bound upstream on an Indonesian river, a landscape scarred by pollution and consumerism. 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.