Elsewhere by Christa Jonathan

Elsewhere

A graphic novel thesis presented by Christa Jonathan 382834 to The School of Culture and Communication in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Creative Writing, Publishing and Editing in the field of Creative Writing Thesis CWRI90008 in the School of Culture and Communication The University of Melbourne Supervisor: Ronnie Scott October 2013

Abstract

Elsewhere is a wholly creative autobiographical comics. It aims to tell its readers an immigration story of finding a home for oneself and searching for a cultural identity of one’s own. Having grown up in Indonesia as someone with Chinese descent, the protagonist of Elsewhere goes on a journey where she presents her personal histories and the incidents that occurred while she was growing up in Jakarta (such as the May ’98 Riot) in the context of the cultural and national history of Indonesia. These remembrances are interpolated into her experience of living in Melbourne, Australia. The readers are guided through the protagonist’s struggle to embrace and accept the multiplicity and hybridity of her identities, through the recollections of her childhood memories and interjections derived from Homi K. Bhabha’s theory of ‘The Third Space of Enunciation’.

Table of Contents Introduction Elsewhere Bibliography

Acknowledgement To the people who made this thesis possible, with my utmost gratitude: Liz MacFarlane for bringing the wonderful world of graphic novel into my academic life with such passion and grace, Ashley Duncan for living in America and replying to all my delirious 3AM e-mails, Catherine Shore-Lorenti and Eden Jade Elliott for comforting silence, honest love and reassuring words, Ribka Iswara, Jonathan Iswara, Ariani Purnamengsih and Angie Jonathan for believing that I will always find my way home.

here

It’s never been a blank canvas. Having different cultures running in my blood, while constantly learning that surely there’s one that you identify with the most, was my first lesson that my identity lies on a delicate balance. It’s funny, in a way, this conviction that others have – this belief that they have a say in who I am and which culture I should belong in. Are you Chinese? Are you Indonesian? Are you… what are you? I can’t figure out where your accent is from. These questions linger at parties and asked by friends, old and new; repeated every year by a new classmate on the first week of a semester; shouted by drunken strangers stumbling on the streets – too early on a Sunday morning. Yes. Yes. I don’t even know, man. It does what it wants. Sometimes the questions are prefaced with I’m sure people have asked you this a million times or I’m sorry or I hope this doesn’t make me sound racist. Sometimes they are summarised in one statement. Go back to your own country.

somewhere

I’ve lived in Australia for ten years now. I was twelve when ‘home’ turned into ‘here’. I don’t remember the last time I told anyone that I’m coming home. I found out recently that I’m eligible to apply for Australian citizenship, and I’m starting to think that I should, given that my life has found its roots in this country. My thoughts about Australia are the way my memories of Indonesia feel: fragmented. Here’s a secret: every time the news mentioned ‘the boat people’, my heart drops. My great grandparents were boat people – they sailed from China to what was yet to be Indonesia, presumably in the 19th century. They didn’t have official documents, or citizenship ceremonies, or faded photographs commemorating their arrivals. I didn’t have to hide on a boat and have enough faith that I was moving towards the promise of a better life. I caught a plane, five years after spending an entire week hiding in the dark and convincing myself that I would die in my room – simply for being recognisably Chinese. I was privileged. My story didn’t end with a country turning me away and politicians using me to further their election campaign.

anywhere

An autobiographical graphic novel, in itself, is something intensely personal by nature. The readers not only get to read the story from the author’s point of view – they also get to see the memories and the images of a person’s life re-drawn and re-imagined on paper. Black on white. Scribbles and words. A voice where silence used to live. The decision to write a graphic novel for a thesis is a daunting one. It’s never failed to make people go ooh and aah that’s interesting, whenever I told them about this project. I don’t understand why it’s such a novelty – maybe because it’s a rare medium for something so academic. It wasn’t a tough decision for me, though. The medium finds its way into my interest before I even knew what story I’d choose to tell – only that I need it to reach as many readers as possible. The images that were only in my head are translated into these pages, and given that this is autobiographical – they aren’t just stories. They are also memories, recollections, wonderments, queries and secrets that were solely mine – and now they are not. Somehow, they now feel more real. I’ve never told anyone how terrifying this whole thing is. I am convinced that doing so would paint me as a victim, or a survivor. I am neither. This thesis, its topic and its medium don’t revolve around its writer being brave enough to write. They are about not apologising for having a story to tell.

elsewhere

The personal is political. The mere act of existing, of breathing, of refusing to apologise not to belong within one box, of reclaiming one’s own identity according to what one knows to be true – I don’t know how it feels to never have to think about any of these. My story, in all honesty, is not special. It is a story of immigration – laced with nostalgia and homelessness, but not hopelessness. At its heart, it is an immigration story like any other. It is a way to write out the confusion – an attempt to make sense of something as complex as wanting to belong somewhere. In a way, this thesis is a Third Space where my identities and my histories collide. But this story has never been just mine – it belongs to the children who grew up terrified for not being wanted in their birth country, who can still hear their heart beating too loudly in the dark, who remember a broken city crippled by fire and covered in ash. This is a story of a forgotten generation of Indonesian children with Chinese descent, whose identities are perpetually on cultural junctions. This is a story of what happened – and I want someone else to remember it, because the history books won’t. This is a story about coming home.

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