WRITERS TO KNOW: DENA IGUSTI
DENA IGUSTI
Born and raised in Queens, New York, Dena Igusti is a queer non-binary (they/he) Indonesian Muslim poet and playwright. Dena’s work covers a multitude of themes ranging from the Indonesian diaspora, Muslim issues, intersectional feminism, grief, and their experience as a survivor of female genital mutilation. Dena is also the co-founder of Asian American-run multidisciplinary arts collective UNCOMMON;YOU and their upcoming poetry collection with Game Over Books will be released this summer.
SHEER: Tell us a little bit about yourself and where you're from.
DENA IGUSTI: I’m a queer non-binary Indonesian Muslim poet and playwright born and raised in Queens, New York. I used to live in Elmhurst then moved to South Ozone Park when I was 9 and lived there ever since. My father is of Balinese and Bugis descent and my mother Bugis. I’m also a survivor of female genital mutilation, and often discuss this as well as Indonesian diaspora, Muslim issues, intersectional feminism, and grief in my poetry. I’m a 2018 NYC Youth Poet Laureate Ambassador and 2017 Federal Hall Fellow. I’m a 2019 Resident Playwright at Players Theatre for my co-written Off-Broadway production SHARUM. I’m the Co-Founder of Asian American-run multidisciplinary arts collective UNCOMMON;YOU and online literary press Short Line Review. I’m currently an Ars Nova Emerging Leaders Fellow. I have a forthcoming poetry collection with Game Over Books that will be out this summer.
SHEER: How would you say your cultural background and upbringing influence your writing?
DI: Growing up Indonesian and Muslim, I didn’t necessarily know what that meant. While there is a close-knit Indonesian community in NYC, I only understood being Indonesian in the context of being Muslim, and that was taught through shame. There was always some family friend waiting to snitch on you, or some auntie gossiping about you, so there was a constant pressure to not get in trouble and be a model kid. As a result, there wasn’t any room to discuss Indonesian-ness and understand the rich cultural history and customs outside of food, language, and dinner parties. On top of that, I was a part of these identities that didn’t actually belong to me. East Asians constantly criticized and invalidated me being Asian, and non-Indonesian Muslims questioned and interrogated how I was Muslim and raised Muslim despite Indonesians having the highest population of Muslims in the world.
Shame was heavily engrained in me when I went through female genital mutilation at 9 years old in Indonesia. I was constantly told that it was meant to “protect me” by “preventing me from sexual urges before marriage.” I was forced to never question it and didn’t realize the trauma of what happened to me until high school when it was mentioned in a course required book and someone’s recounting of their experience was written in an islamophobic and xenophobic article. I knew what happened to me was wrong but I also knew my trauma didn’t justify racism and islamophobia towards my people. I was tired of being caught between admitting that I was hurt by my own and protecting my community, and didn’t want to sacrifice one for the other, and the same went for all the intersections of my identity.
It wasn’t until I got into poetry in college and met more poets of color as well as Indonesian artists outside of my community that I learned I didn’t have to compromise myself or my narrative. Because I wasn’t bound by any expectations or shame in poetry, I delved into my identity. Through poetry, I am able to describe and visually show through form, style, and line breaks the ways I feel disconnected, and to showcase that there is still significance in fragmented information. I try not to fill in those missing gaps between my narrative. Rather, I hone in on what I do and do not know, how to build on both, and how to create entirely new information that combines and transcends these binary components.
after the incision
felled on a sudden floor in Indonesia // the part that is supposed to be my clitoris
expands & bubbles then bubbles & expands // until arms, legs, & a head protrude
a figure of flesh, forms what looks // like a body of mine, but the part cut out of me
still there.
the body leaps across the atlantic // i try to pull it down by the ankles but
its legs take me with it // we end up in front of my house*
*a plot of brick in the west // i can name home
the body takes the key from my pocket
lets itself in, rushes to my room.
by the time i enter // the body has opened // both closets
rummaged through my things // puts nothing back //
i ask the body why won’t you come back to me?
the body // scoffs,
why are you hurt?
because you are not mine anymore
the body shrugs its shoulders is that the only reason you feel
loss?
the body takes the shirt we once shared
the photograph of us together //
the underwear we liked //
i tell me i miss you
…
i ask can we ever happen again
the body leans in
a small pain is still pain
you cut out part of me
do not be surprised that
the rest of me left too
I sob.
i choke out
i never wanted this.
they said
no one could touch us
if there was nothing to touch
i heard another body
died from an unwanted hand
the rest of it died shortly after
if i chose the hands
that killed the same part
i could still live
SHEER: How does living in New York City inspire your poetry?
DI: I have immense pride as a New Yorker. I was born and raised in Queens, but my dad had a bakery when I was in elementary to middle school in Lower East Side, Manhattan so I spent half of my time there from 9-15 years old. There was never a moment where I felt ostracized about my ethnicity or religion despite being the only Indonesian most of the time because every school I went to was mostly, if not only, BIPOC. I never related to Asian American stories about being othered by white people because I never had to deal with being in a predominantly-white area until I got to college. As a result, a lot of my writing in relation to my culture focuses more on the white supremacist systems in place that cause the intersections of my identities to be displaced rather than personal encounters with white people.
That being said, I was very aware of the ways whiteness is favored. Gentrification was on the rise as I got older. I saw loved ones getting evicted and never seeing them again. My dad had to close his bakery because the building his bakery was in raised their rent prices in favor of white tenants and we couldn’t afford to stay. As I got more into art, I saw my art colleagues and friends struggling to eat and be forced to shell out money for pay-to-play venues while white gentrifiers were given huge art grants to “represent” New York City. People are getting displaced and either get arrested or die. I love my city, but I know fully well that my city does not love me back let alone care about me or my friends.
But other New Yorkers have always shown love for me. Through Urban Word, fellowships in NYC, workshops, and just being with my friends and family again, I’ve realized that there is significance to my stories and who and what I write about even if most of America or the world doesn’t understand. I learned what it means to write for my people and my own and not care about any other gaze outside of the ones I care about. My writing wouldn’t have flourished if I didn’t come back home.
SHEER: What inspired you to launch Shortline Review? And what was the process of launching this like?
DI: Short Line Review started the end of freshman year of college with my friend Marwa Adina. We were frustrated with the notion that as artists we couldn’t directly contribute to issues happening in our communities besides raise awareness, so we wanted to change that. We initially started as a print literary press, selling print issues using our school printers and giving all the profits as donations to the homeless in New Brunswick, NJ and disaster relief for Baton Rouge during the 2016 Louisiana floods. But because I moved back to NYC, it’s become a digital press, accepting rolling submissions and publishing and promoting emerging artists and work.
SHEER: Tell us a little more about Uncommon;You and how it came to fruition.
DI: UCY ~technically~ started on a January night last year in Forest Hills but all of the co-founders (me, Esther Lee, and Murtaza) have worked together waaaaay before that when Murtaza and I wrote SHARUM and Esther worked as the producer, lighting designer, and set designer for our first run of the play at Hunter College in 2018. Esther Lee and I were hanging out and talking about how we wanted to go to more QBIPOC parties and art events, and start new projects but there weren’t any opportunities. But then we thought “why can’t we do this shit ourselves?” and thought about being a QPOC events hosting collective. We saw a shirt at Target that said “uncommon you” (I bought it) and thought it would be a cool name. We then told the idea to Murtaza and he suggested putting a semicolon in the middle to imply that we’re always transforming and pausing between transitions rather than ending. Since then, we’ve evolved into a multidisciplinary arts collective, producing an Off-Broadway play at Players Theatre, hosting workshops for emerging artists to navigate their respective industries, upcoming projects, and an online zine.
SHEER: Who are some poets/writers who inspire your work and style?
DI: Safia Elhillo, Fatimah Asghar, Jamila Woods, Danez Smith, Kaveh Akbar, Paige Lewis, Frank Bidart, Franny Choi, Eve L. Ewing and soooo many more. These poets have taught me that I’m not confined to specific binaries and that it’s okay to have nuances in my narratives. They’ve also taught me that looking to community, however you define that, is integral to understanding your own individuality. There is no such thing as being a “lone wolf,” and friendship and bonds and chosen family are essential in understanding yourself, your people, and your work.
SHEER: When did you begin working on your upcoming poetry collection with Game Over Books and what would you say was the biggest challenge you faced while working to get published?
DI: I was in a really bad place when I started writing this collection. In 2017 I was coming to terms with the trauma I endured from being a survivor of female genital mutilation. I came back to NYC from college to find a lot of neighborhoods I grew up in/with disappear along with the people I knew and loved due to gentrification. I found out some people I grew up with died/were dying at an early age, including my first boyfriend in middle school. I was so afraid of dying but I also didn’t want to exist. Indonesia was going through another earthquake and no one cared about my people dying and only about the safety of white tourists. I felt like I was in a constant state of loss and anticipating new loss. I didn’t know how to write about these things other than exactly how I felt and processed them, so I did just that. I didn’t intentionally write a collection. I wrote a series of things that I was going through and they all centered around the same things and I put them all in one book.
The biggest challenge I faced with getting this book published was being patient. I tried to push it out for two years. I was always a contest finalist but it never went through to publication. I got so many rejection letters and spent so much money on submission fees. There were points where I doubted if the collection was good at all. But with all the great reception I received from editors and how hard I worked on the book, I knew it would be picked up somewhere. I just had to wait for my time, and soon it happened.
SHEER: How do you balance working on your independent writing while collaborating on so many great projects and ventures that support other creatives of color?
DI: I think capitalism and pseudo-marketing give this terrible notion that networking and collaborating is rubbing elbows with whoever you think is successful in order to do well, but that’s so far from the case. Collaboration is working on what you love with who you love to some capacity. All of my current collaborations have come from acts of love, whether that be for my friends, for the shared identities/issues of me and the other artist(s), or both. This ensured that the work created was being taken care of and that I was being taken care of.
In collaborations, I try to be clear about my capacity to do things, and communicate if something comes up that will prevent me from working on something at a given time frame. We try to set soft deadlines knowing that for whatever reason these dates may change. For my independent writing, I dedicate certain nights of the week for my own work and try not to change these times, and make a small (and messy) list of what I should apply for along with what I need to do for a collaboration. I also make sure there are gaps in my schedule where I can just do nothing and watch YouTube for several hours and nap.
I also think it’s okay to not do everything at the same time. You can spend a certain amount of time on just a collaboration and a certain amount of time on just your work and a certain amount of time on not working. Do whatever serves you best at that moment and how you want to look up at the world.
SHEER: What advice would you give writers of color as they find their voice through their work?
DI: A couple of things: 1. Don’t feel obligated to only write or limit your writing to what has been said before about your communities. If you don’t want to write another lunchbox story, you don’t have to. If you don’t want to write about the ocean, as grand as it is, you don’t have to. If you do want to write about how Power Rangers relates to diaspora you certainly can! 2. There is no secret way of getting published other than constantly submitting, getting your work out there and hoping someone empathizes with your work. Don’t be discouraged by rejections and don’t compromise the terms in which your work is presented just because you don’t get a lot of acceptances. 3. Your writing is your writing. It is not your therapy. Therapy is therapy, healing is healing. Writing is such a powerful tool in navigating, naming experiences, and having agency over trauma, but do not confuse writing about trauma with mining your trauma to write a good piece. Make sure you have an external support system outside of your writing.
self portrait as asa akira’s face on google images when searching ‘asian women’
MY LINEAGE ETCHED IN PIXELS
MY BODY TRANSLATED TOO MUCH
FOR ANOTHER MAN’S EYES I LIVE
UP TO MY STEREOTYPE, WILL,
LEGACY, ONCE MORE: ETERNAL A CUM THING, BUT WET & NOT WET IF THEY CAN’T FIND MY CORPSE THEY’LL AT LEASTFIND A BODY (I CRAFT)
IN A SPACE // ALL MY BIRTHMARKS OUT
OF FOCUS // OUT OF FRAME & IN
-VISIBLE MONIKERS GIVING
A NOT LOVE BUT A RISK WHICH WILL
FOREVER BE MY FUCKING NAME360P HD // ONE WAY MIRROR FOR GIRLS
SO LUBRICATED ON ALL AND BOTH SIDES
(LOVERS, OCEANS, NAMES NOT THEIRS CONDENSED
ONTO SKIN) THEIR EYES REMAIN HALF OPENED//
EVEN AFTER DEATH // ALL OF THEM
WHO DID IT STILL, NAMELESS: REMAIN