Asian American Writers Workshop | AAWWTV: Ahmad Fuadi's Land of Five Towers @AAWWNYC | Uploaded October 2018 | Updated October 2024, 4 hours ago.
AAWW is a national literary nonprofit dedicated to the belief that Asian American stories deserve to be told. We host events in NYC and broadcast them here! Please support us by donating at aaww.org/donate so we can continue this work. You can also become a fanclub member and receive custom designed pins & stickers at aaww.org/fanclub/.
Join us for a night of reading and film with visiting Indonesian writer Ahmad Fuadi, whose bestselling novel Negeri 5 Menara (The Land of Five Towers), an uplifting story of a young Muslim boy’s journey to Islamic boarding school, became the source of inspiration for one of Indonesia’s top box office successes. Ahmad will read from the novel, the first in his trilogy about Alif’s life, and we'll watch selections from the feature film. After the screening, Ahmad will join New York Southeast Asian Network co-founder Margaret Scott and Indonesian Film Forum New York Director Lutfi Kurniawan in conversation.
Ahmad Fuadi is a journalist, novelist, and social entrepreneur. Negeri 5 Menara (The Land of Five Towers) is the first in a trilogy, followed by by Ranah 3 Warna (The Earth of 3 Colors), and Rantau 1 Muara. The series, based on Fuadi’s life, has won acclaim for its depiction of friendship and insight into life at the pesantren, an Islamic boarding school unique to Indonesia. Professor of South & Southeast Asian Studies Jeff Hadler writes that the novel can be read on many levels; as part of a literary history of childhood memoirs and the “effect of education, and changing ideas of self in Indonesia and the Malay World.” Negeri 5 Menara (The Land of Five Towers) has won several awards, including the 2010 Khatulistiwa Literary Award (Long List) and the 2010 Favorite Fiction Writer and Book from the Indonesian Readers Awards. The film adaptation by director Affandi Abdul Rachman was one of Indonesia's most watched movies of 2012. In 2009, Ahmad established Komunitaas Meara (Community of the Towers), a volunteer-based organization that focuses on providing education to underserved children in Sumatra, Java, and Sulawesi.
Lutfi Kurniawan is the Director of the Indonesian Film Forum New York.
Margaret Scott is an adjunct associate professor at New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service and a journalist, currently focusing on the role of Islam in Indonesian politics. She is a founding member of the New York Southeast Asian Network.
This event is co-sponsored by the American-Indonesian Cultural & Educational Foundation and the Indonesian Film Forum New York
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aaww.org
facebook.com/AsianAmericanWritersWorkshop
twitter.com/aaww
AAWW is a national not-for-profit arts organization devoted to the creating, publishing, developing and disseminating of creative writing by Asian Americans–in other words, we’re the preeminent organization dedicated to the belief that Asian American stories deserve to be told.
We’re building the Asian literary culture of tomorrow through our curatorial platform, which includes our New York events series and our online editorial initiatives. In a time when China and India are on the rise, when immigration is a vital electoral issue, when the detention of Muslim Americans is a matter of common practice, we believe Asian American literature is vital to interpret our post-multicultural but not post-racial age. Our curatorial take is intellectual and alternative, pop cultural and highbrow, warm and artistically innovative, and vested in New York City communities.
Our curatorial platform is premised on the idea of a big-tent Asian American cultural pluralism. We’re interested in both the New York publishing industry and ethnic studies, the South Asian diasporic novel and the Asian American story of assimilation, high culture and pop culture, Lisa Lowe and Amar Chitra Katha, avant-garde poetry and spoken word, journalism and critical race theory, Midnight’s Children and Dictee. We are against both an exclusive literary culture that believes that race does not exist and Asian American narratives that lead to self-stereotyping and limit the menu of our identity. We are for inventing the future of Asian American literary culture. Named one of the top five Asian American groups nationally, covered by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and Poets & Writers, we are a safe community space and an anti-racist counterculture, incubating new ideas and interpretations of what it means to be both an American and a global citizen.
AAWW is a national literary nonprofit dedicated to the belief that Asian American stories deserve to be told. We host events in NYC and broadcast them here! Please support us by donating at aaww.org/donate so we can continue this work. You can also become a fanclub member and receive custom designed pins & stickers at aaww.org/fanclub/.
Join us for a night of reading and film with visiting Indonesian writer Ahmad Fuadi, whose bestselling novel Negeri 5 Menara (The Land of Five Towers), an uplifting story of a young Muslim boy’s journey to Islamic boarding school, became the source of inspiration for one of Indonesia’s top box office successes. Ahmad will read from the novel, the first in his trilogy about Alif’s life, and we'll watch selections from the feature film. After the screening, Ahmad will join New York Southeast Asian Network co-founder Margaret Scott and Indonesian Film Forum New York Director Lutfi Kurniawan in conversation.
Ahmad Fuadi is a journalist, novelist, and social entrepreneur. Negeri 5 Menara (The Land of Five Towers) is the first in a trilogy, followed by by Ranah 3 Warna (The Earth of 3 Colors), and Rantau 1 Muara. The series, based on Fuadi’s life, has won acclaim for its depiction of friendship and insight into life at the pesantren, an Islamic boarding school unique to Indonesia. Professor of South & Southeast Asian Studies Jeff Hadler writes that the novel can be read on many levels; as part of a literary history of childhood memoirs and the “effect of education, and changing ideas of self in Indonesia and the Malay World.” Negeri 5 Menara (The Land of Five Towers) has won several awards, including the 2010 Khatulistiwa Literary Award (Long List) and the 2010 Favorite Fiction Writer and Book from the Indonesian Readers Awards. The film adaptation by director Affandi Abdul Rachman was one of Indonesia's most watched movies of 2012. In 2009, Ahmad established Komunitaas Meara (Community of the Towers), a volunteer-based organization that focuses on providing education to underserved children in Sumatra, Java, and Sulawesi.
Lutfi Kurniawan is the Director of the Indonesian Film Forum New York.
Margaret Scott is an adjunct associate professor at New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service and a journalist, currently focusing on the role of Islam in Indonesian politics. She is a founding member of the New York Southeast Asian Network.
This event is co-sponsored by the American-Indonesian Cultural & Educational Foundation and the Indonesian Film Forum New York
--
aaww.org
facebook.com/AsianAmericanWritersWorkshop
twitter.com/aaww
AAWW is a national not-for-profit arts organization devoted to the creating, publishing, developing and disseminating of creative writing by Asian Americans–in other words, we’re the preeminent organization dedicated to the belief that Asian American stories deserve to be told.
We’re building the Asian literary culture of tomorrow through our curatorial platform, which includes our New York events series and our online editorial initiatives. In a time when China and India are on the rise, when immigration is a vital electoral issue, when the detention of Muslim Americans is a matter of common practice, we believe Asian American literature is vital to interpret our post-multicultural but not post-racial age. Our curatorial take is intellectual and alternative, pop cultural and highbrow, warm and artistically innovative, and vested in New York City communities.
Our curatorial platform is premised on the idea of a big-tent Asian American cultural pluralism. We’re interested in both the New York publishing industry and ethnic studies, the South Asian diasporic novel and the Asian American story of assimilation, high culture and pop culture, Lisa Lowe and Amar Chitra Katha, avant-garde poetry and spoken word, journalism and critical race theory, Midnight’s Children and Dictee. We are against both an exclusive literary culture that believes that race does not exist and Asian American narratives that lead to self-stereotyping and limit the menu of our identity. We are for inventing the future of Asian American literary culture. Named one of the top five Asian American groups nationally, covered by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and Poets & Writers, we are a safe community space and an anti-racist counterculture, incubating new ideas and interpretations of what it means to be both an American and a global citizen.
