Books That Changed Me

Intan Paramaditha is the author of Apple and Knife, a collection of dark stories about disobedient women. Her first novel, The Wandering, won a PEN Translates Award and is published by Harvill Secker.

Frankenstein
Mary Shelley

I found Frankenstein at the British Council library in Jakarta in the late ’90s. Just like Mary Shelley when she was writing her story, I was an angry 19-year-old, with a penchant for the gothic and sympathy for the monster.Frankenstein is a feminist critique of knowledge and power, the myth of creative genius, and the Romantic ideology of the sublime. Exposing the political potential of horror in feminist writing, the novel has largely influenced my creative work.

Calon Arang
Toeti Heraty

Another crucial text that sparked my interest in horror, the grotesque, and monstrous women. The Balinese tale of Calon Arang, a vengeful witch who spread death and disease and adorned herself with human organs, has been told many times in Indonesian arts and culture. Toeti Heraty’s long prose poem was the first to offer a feminist interpretation, portraying Calon Arang as a tale of anxiety when patriarchal power is threatened by the presence of a powerful woman.

Sister Outsider
Audre Lorde

When I started my graduate studies in the US, I realised that the feminist theories that shaped me were predominantly Western, and so I embarked on a journey to decolonise my feminist scholarship. Sister Outsider problematises the universalising white feminist discourses and demands that we recognise difference. Each time I reflect on feminist resistance and negotiation, the book continues to remind me: ‘‘The master’s tool will never dismantle the master’s house.’’

Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject
Saba Mahmood

How do we understand women’s agency outside the secular feminist framework? I read this book to question my own secular biases about Islam and gender. Saba Mahmood’s anthropological study on the women’s mosque movement in Egypt challenged many assumptions about secularism, liberalism, and feminism. It pushed me to complicate the notion of agency, a paradigm shift that changed the way I view and interact with women shaped by different power structures and knowledge traditions.