This thesis will discuss the Indonesian exile’s trajectories and their significance in understanding the global political formation and the intergenerational memory in the novel Home. Written by Leila Salikha Chudori, Home discussing the communist killing in Indonesia in 1965 and its implications to the global political movement during the Cold War era. By engaging the politics of memory concerning the ex- prisoners’ perspectives and the historical interactions among different generations, my analysis ultimately investigates the Indonesian exile’s experiences to understand the complexities of the global political movement outside of the Cold War narrative. By reading the representation of Indonesian exile’s experience in the novel, this research propose to situate the Indonesian exiles trajectories as another way to investigate the political formation and the identity construction for the Indonesian exiles and their generation. Chudori develops complex narratives and offers an alternative historical investigation of the political contradictions entailed by the 1960’s massacre rather than rehearsing the familiar Cold War ideological divides. Through the Indonesian exiles and their diasporic experiences, we are led to see national politics from a global and transnational perspective. This research also consider the literary revisit of historical violence as a renewed starting point for imagining third world liberation. Moreover, through the political mechanism during the New Order era in Indonesia (Orde Baru by Soeharto in 1966-1998), the nation reinforces the border that separates those who can be included in to the national community. The memory transmission across generations of Indonesian exiles, as it is represented in the novel, advances our critical understanding of nationalism, identity, and race concerning to Cold War anti-communist ideology.
Keywords: cold war, Indonesian exiles, coup, mass killing, memory, identity
