Family, history, culture, and a wide view of the world make up this fascinating work by author Berg. Her father emigrated from Java in the East Indies to the Netherlands, married a European beauty, and moved with his family to the United States when Berg was very young. Her father was strict, her mother sometimes frustrated and angry, and it took many years for her to begin to wonder why and to delve into the reasons. One clue was encapsulated in the term "Indisch," or Indo-European, opening a trail that led back through several generations and across the world.
Five generations back, it began with Fransz, a German who got into grave trouble as an impetuous youth and was forced to flee his homeland. He did so by enlisting in the army and soon shipped out to the German East Indies. He would rise to high rank and accustom himself to the ways of the charming, mysterious islanders, which included the common practice of taking native women as servants and often as mistresses, a role known as njai. Though married twice to women of his own culture, Fransz had more than one njai relationship and several children from them. Berg has postulated that this ancestry, though unconfirmed, may explain her Indisch heritage. Gathering the complex skeins of family connections as she knows or has devised them, she paints a picture of life for her family from Fransz to the current generation. Her father, Anton ("Ton"), was a soldier in World War II, moved to Europe, worked for NATO, and met her mother, Anna.
Beginning from the early 1800s, the author has created imaginative family scenarios based on the information she has been able to glean, portraying the Berg clan in a lively chronicle with photographs and old letters, providing further interest. Throughout this remarkable combination of family fact and well-considered fiction, Berg speaks at times of her inner voices, often reflecting trauma, in keeping with statistical data provided concerning the "psychological complaints" of those like herself who were the offspring of Dutch colonial prisoners. She also feels within herself a sense of the magical call of Java and her Indisch ancestry.
One of the most moving segments of her far-reaching work describes her visit to that region, at one point following a penciled map drawn by her aging father of the town where he was born. There she was able to envision her father's youth in a country dominated by Western rulers yet still able to retain its mystical values and virtues. She concludes that, at a certain point, our parents' trauma becomes our karma—"the unconscious energy that governs our lives."
With her background in psychology and spirituality, Berg has included a useful glossary for readers to help navigate the cross-cultural tales included in her narrative and a genealogy based on established records and her own intelligent speculations. Berg's book will appeal to all who are drawn to the study of exotic cultures and the complexities of racial, national, and generational mixing that have colored her life and may affect anyone who crosses society's established boundaries.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review