Still I Dream of Java

Why I Wrote This Book:In Still I Dream of Java I reinterpret the memories of my Dutch-Indo aunt who grew up in the final, turbulent years of the Dutch East Indies, as the new nation of Indonesia emerged. For more than three hundred years the unique blended community of the Indo people had been integral to that vast archipelago. But as World War II and the Japanese occupation overturned Dutch rule, Indo society, too, disintegrated, never to recover.Still I Dream of Java is a work of literary non-fiction because I write about actual people, surviving actual experiences, and I believe their incredible story, lived in a defining moment for world history, deserves to be told. So the names of people and places are real and unchanged. I have used creative techniques to convey dialogue but what happened took place.Each of us recalls the past in our own unique way, but my hope is that my book will help in our remembering, and that in our shared memories we honor all that we are.~ Catrien Ross