My Story

When I was a child, I asked too many questions—questions that often made my parents uneasy because they couldn’t answer them.
Why is a banana called a banana? Who decided that red means stop? Why does my mother cry when she reads that story, while I don’t? Why do we name the same thing differently in different tongues? I would imagine my own answers, and from those questions, stories began to grow.

I was born and raised in Central Java, where my parents taught me hanacaraka—the Javanese script—and the delicate art of speaking differently depending on whom I was addressing: ngoko, krama madya, krama inggil. Later, in school, I learned Bahasa Indonesia, which followed another rhythm entirely, and then English, and later still, French. Each language opened a new way of seeing. I became fascinated by how words shape perception, how language intersects and collides, how meaning shifts when carried across tongues and cultures.

I have always lived in the tension between languages and the emotions they hold. My fascination with words soon met my love for performance. Since childhood, I was chosen to read poetry aloud and act on stage. As a teenager, I appeared in radio dramas, TV plays, and public service advertisements in Semarang. Performing was my way of giving voice to what language hides.

My parents were not wealthy, nor highly educated, but they worked tirelessly so I could find the answers they could not give me. Their devotion built the foundation for my curiosity and resilience.

Years later, while seeking a postgraduate scholarship, I met my husband and moved to Belgium. Suddenly, none of my familiar languages worked—not Indonesian, not Javanese, not even English. I began again, learning French and the culture of Francophone Belgium, as well as Dutch and the nuances of Flemish culture. It deepened my fascination with language as a bridge and sometimes as a border. Translating classical works became a form of cultural negotiation, a way of building dialogue across histories and identities.

Today, I continue to write, research, and teach, exploring how languages, literatures, and cultures encounter one another. My academic path led me to the Académie de l’Art de la Parole in Brussels, where I merge theory and performance, and soon toward my doctoral research in comparative literature between Indonesia and France. My goal is to ensure that literature does not remain confined to libraries or academic journals but continues to live—in classrooms, in performances, in dialogue, and in discovery.

I open myself to collaboration—with universities, cultural institutions, and artists—through lectures, workshops, and creative exchanges on literary translation, cross-cultural understanding, and creative writing. As an actress, I also collaborate in theater and cinema projects in French, English, Indonesian, and Javanese.

Thanks for reading my story.
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