Namaku Alam (a small review lol)

Namaku Alam, a spin-off story from pulang that took place in the same universe created by Leila S. Chudori is a novel about Segara Alam, a teenager in the late 1980’s Indonesia background that struggles to keep and come to terms with a deep and dark past rooted to the tragedy of 1965 in Indonesia. Juggling between love, friendship, and family, Segara Alam is living the hellish life of the ‘forgotten’ people of Indonesia, the life where the sense of freedom and identity was stripped from them.

Okay i think that’s good enough for an introduction haha. I tried to word it as best as i can and there is nothing much i can do with my limited writing skills (its kind of why i decided to write and test myself just how far i could go). Now let’s actually get to the reviewing part!

I want to start of by giving a very big appriciation for the writer, Leila S. Chudori for writing this book. I genuinely fell in love with your wordings, your way of story telling, and all the topics that really did opened my eyes about the forgotten history of Indonesia that our country’s school system failed to do so. So, thankyou, for inspiring me further to write, to yearn, and to educate myself more about our history. Please accept this review from me.

As a highschooler who lives in Jakarta, reading the book gave me a sense of fresh nostalgia about the places that i recognized and have been through before but in a totally different era. I loved how the author depicted all these places, slangs, and actions the characters took wthout making it seemed boring or too complicated for the readers. I can definitely say its one of the reasons why her book is so appealing to the younger generations (including me!).

I liked how Alam showed such a raw characterization of how a teenager acts. The story showed that despite all the hardships and trauma that Alam and his family had to face after the tragedy of 1965, even after his father left and got executed just by the suspicion of being assosciated with the communist party who led the mass killing of 1965, even after realizing that he was different from everyone, Alam still tried to hope for a better life. He didnt just simply gave up even if he was shown to be pretty realistic as both a kid and a teenager, he still finds himself blurting out strong opinions that was the literal opposite of his intention, hiding.

This sense of tension from the fear of getting recognized as the son of a political prisoner leeches on to you from the very beginning of the story. Hiding has been a big part of Alam’s Identity, having to hold back from beating up his own cousin after he tried to insult Alam’s mother and identity, having to give up on a good oppurtunity in school just because of his identity, and having to fear the possibillities of him getting expelled from highschool all again, because of his Identity. Alam’s Frustration was seen and portrayed, not always like a ticking bomb (even if the character himself had to take karate lesson’s to manage his anger issues) his frustration would sometimes die down not because of the government suddenly changed or tried to do better, it was simply because of his friends and family presence in his life.

The book really did play out a story in which its a journal of every person that left a meaning in Alam’s heart, body, and soul. It really portrays how much alam values the person or just how it affected him to grow as a person.

Overall i really do reccomend it and it has been a fun read for me personally, the pacing was not too fast nor too slow and just the raw emotions and thoughts crossing Alam’s mind made it very appealing to me. Im definitely waiting for the next part of this book.