WRITERS TO KNOW: TETA ALIM OF BUAH ZINE
TETA ALIM | BUAH zine
Born in Jakarta, Indonesia and currently based in Washington, D.C, Teta Alim is the founder and editor of Buah. Buah is an online zine focused on creating community for diasporic folks who want to connect through their Indonesian heritage, however they decide to relate to it.
SHEER: Tell us a little bit about yourself.
TETA ALIM: Sure! Hi, I'm Teta! I was born in Jakarta, Indonesia, but I moved to upstate New York when I was a baby, and that's where I grew up. Then, at 18, I moved to Washington, D.C., for college, and that's where I've been ever since.
I studied political science and journalism, and now I work as a writer and editor in D.C. When I have time (hah!) I'm a freelance music journalist -- I love covering the D.C. music scene. I also run a zine, Buah zine, which aims to create a space for people of Indonesian heritage to explore/critique/celebrate/question/unpack/confront their heritage in diaspora.
SHEER: How did your cultural upbringing influence your career interests and current passions?
TA: Hmm....well, that's a really interesting question. I didn't grow up in a family of journalists or writers. Many of my family members got involved in education or the medical field, so I didn't have a personal example of someone becoming a writer. But I did grow up in a family of storytellers, which I think helped influence my interests. When I was younger, I remember my parents always telling me stories, whether it was reading a book for bedtime or it was my dad telling me Indonesian folklore, like Nyi Roro Kidul or babi ngepet. Also, growing up Muslim, there were stories from the Qur'an that I had to learn. I was an avid reader as a child, and I loved when my mom took me to the library and I'd go home with a stack of books. I then started writing these short stories -- nothing I would ever share with anyone, but I did spend a lot of time writing and even drawing my own comics at one point.
SHEER: Was there a definite moment that inspired you to become a writer or did your interest grow over time?
TA: There was never that concrete moment where I thought, "Oh, I'll become a writer!" In fact, I didn't even think it was possible for me. I think, because in a lot of pop culture depictions of writers, they always seem to be well-off. I saw these financially stable depictions of glamorous writers and could not relate, because my family was very much financially unstable. Now I know that's not the case for a lot of people, but yeah, that image of the rich cosmopolitan writer made it seem like a fantasy for me.
So, I started college as a political science major, thinking that I would end up working in politics or being a diplomat or something like that. At the time, it was something I was interested in and it was something that I had fought for, in a way, because my parents very much wanted me to go into medicine. But I'd always wanted to do something more creative, and I ended up taking some journalism classes, and from then on, I pivoted more towards journalism. I found journalism to be the best space for me to explore all of my interests, in history, music, arts, politics, and in people's stories.
SHEER: When did you develop the idea for Buah zine and what was the process for launching it like?
TA: I launched Buah zine in January 2018, but it's an idea I had for a good chunk of time. I grew up with a temporary Indonesian community; my dad was a grad student in upstate New York, and so we would mingle with all the other Indonesian grad student families until they eventually had to go back to Indonesia at the end of their studies. My family ended up staying in the U.S., but that did mean by the time I was in middle school, I wasn't around many other Indonesians. My parents did make the effort to take us to New York City or Pennsylvania, where there were larger, tighter Indonesian communities. But, at school, I was the only Indonesian in my friend group, and it had this effect on me where I became OK with being a "token" friend. But that's a terrible position to be in, and I had a lot of unpacking and unlearning to do.
So, because I didn't have that Indonesian community through some critical growing years -- high school, especially -- I started to feel like hey, I wish I did have this community, and I wonder if anyone else feels this same isolation that I do. I was looking for spaces where I could explore all these complexities that come with Indonesian heritage in diaspora and connect with others, but those spaces are so rare in the U.S. I decided that I shouldn't wait for that space to pop up -- I should just create it. So, finally, in 2018, I started Buah, and here we are.
SHEER: How do you choose the subjects for your features in Buah?
TA: It started off with people I had connected with online, via Facebook or Instagram, and a friend of a friend of a friend. And then, when that network kind of reached its end, I would just take notice of pieces I'd read, videos I'd seen, events I went to, and cold-contact people. I feel very fortunate that, when I first started the zine, I actually had a few non-Indonesian friends say to me, like, "Hey, I have a friend who's Indonesian who's interested in talking with you."
For Buah, I want to make sure that it's a space where Indonesian heritage is complex, complicated, changing, open-ended, unfinished. There is no one way to be a person with Indonesian heritage. But this is not a nationalistic project -- I am not interested in promoting the nation-state or "Indonesian-ness" as an exclusionary, staid, decided concept. Even though the phrasing is still limiting, the reason why I say "person with Indonesian heritage" and not "Indonesian" is because I don't want to tie this to language or borders or citizenship. This is about how a person with such heritage views the world, how the world views them, and what does it all mean to them.
I also think it's important that Buah zine shows the vast experiences and the threads of connection that can come with Indonesian heritage. Again, and I cannot stress this enough, there is not one way to be a person with Indonesian heritage. And, as someone who is Indonesian Muslim with Javanese heritage (Javanese is the majority ethnicity), it's also a reminder to myself, because when I go back to Indonesia, I am absorbed into the majority in many ways. Buah zine is a space for marginalized ethnic groups, people who are LGBTQ+, people of different spiritual practices, people of multiple heritages.
Indonesia likes to tout Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, which basically means "Unity in Diversity," but the reality now is that it's more like "Diversity Is Only Good When Marginalized Groups Shut Up and Don't Complain." So, I want to make sure with Buah zine is an open, complex space for people who are also interested in keeping that space open and complex. I hope this makes sense!
SHEER: How do you approach authentically expressing your Indonesian heritage in the face of appropriation and ignorance that is common in Western media and culture?
TA: "Authenticity" is so interesting, because what does it even mean to be "authentically" Indonesian? For years, I felt like a "fake" Indonesian, because I'm not fluent in Bahasa Indonesia, I didn't grow up in Indonesia, I had a lower spicy-tolerance than my parents. I felt like a "failed" Indonesian. But despite how I am perceived, I am a person with Indonesian heritage, and it's a very important part of who I am and how I look at the world. If I am saying this is my heritage, I'm really not interested in others objecting to that.
Now, how am I "authentically expressing" that heritage within the Western gaze? I don't even know how to answer that, because when I created Buah zine, I only thought about the gaze of other folks of Indonesian heritage in diaspora. My audience and the community I want to serve is other folks of Indonesian heritage in diaspora. People of non-Indonesian heritage are more than welcome to read and support Buah zine, but they are not my focus.
When I was much younger, I used to be so invested in "breaking stereotypes." I thought it was up to me to change people's minds, to teach people, about what they thought of me as an immigrant, as a Muslim, as an Indonesian. But I had to unlearn that, because it's absolutely not up to me to challenge the stereotypes that were forced on me. The appropriation and ignorance of Indonesia is absolutely by design. You know, the Netherlands, one of Indonesia's former colonizers, doesn't even recognize Indonesian independence as being in 1945. For the Dutch, they "gave" us independence in 1949. So, even if the rest of the world wants to continue to ignore Indonesia and its diaspora, I won't, and I hope the communities that I'm a part of won't either.
SHEER: What are some common stereotypes you've heard about Indonesia and how is your work with Buah challenging these notions?
TA: I mentioned earlier that I'm no longer interested in challenging stereotypes forced on me from the Western gaze. If you have stereotypes of Indonesia informed from an imperialist, orientalist lens, that's on you to unlearn, not me. In my Instagram bio, I wrote: "Don't tell me about your trip to Bali." I don't want to hear about anyone's summer vacation in Bali. I am not from Bali, I've only been to Bali once, I cannot give you any recommendations. I don't care that you've always wanted to go to Bali! Please, do not talk to me about your Bali trip. And, please, don't talk to me about about "Eat Pray Love."
Buah zine is focused on creating community for diasporic folks who want to connect through their Indonesian heritage, however they decide to relate to it. If you're a person with Indonesian heritage who grew up and/or lived outside of Indonesia, I hope you find Buah zine useful, and I hope we can learn, and unlearn, and grow together.
SHEER: How would you like to see Buah evolve in the future and do you have plans to expand your mission across more channels?
TA: I hope to keep Buah committed to being a space for marginalized folks, for those on the margins of the margins. I would like to collaborate more with others doing similar work, not just within the context of Indonesian heritage and not just within the U.S. I do also want to collaborate more with people in Indonesia doing similar work; I've connected with a few artists there, but I definitely want to connect with more!
I hope to do more in-person events, and I have a couple already lined up for 2020. Of course, there will be a physical "Issue 3" coming out in summer 2020, inshaAllah. I just want to make sure the work I do with Buah is inclusive, community-oriented, complex, and growing.
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