Happy Stories, Mostly

Pasaribu is one of the most important Indonesian writers today. --Litro Magazine Happy Stories, Mostly ... navigates queer suffering with a deep supply of tenderness and humour - and with empathy for all its characters. --Exberliner Magazine An enticing collection, where the smallest pedestrian acts--such as finding a secret journal or getting a cubicle to work in--have the power to force characters to question their internalized biases. --Asymptote Journal Pasaribu tells a truth plain and human, stripped to reveal its strangeness, its absurdity, its pain. . . A quiet but rigid resistance against that world's desire to maim the queer spirit. --Singapore Review of Books The book's formal diversity, epigraphs, mixing of genres, signal to a medley of traditions that cannot easily be explained as a singular poetry from the 'margins.' By referencing Indonesian writers like Wiji Thukul alongside Herta Muller and Richard Siken, Sergius Seeks Bacchus emerges not from the sidelines but from within the continuous and intertextual script of transnationalism. --The Poetry Review Literally and metaphorically driven underground by unorthodox desires, Pasaribu's primary stance is seeking; theirs is a restless questing as his cast of characters search for a shared history that is textually present but remains elusively out of reach. --Mascara Literary Review A new and magical voice emerging in literature, yet one almost preternaturally wise, profoundly celebratory of the history and possibility of poetry. --Christos Tsiolkas, author of The Slap and Damascus