Part of Ottilie’s family history lies in the former Dutch East Indies. For several generations, her family on her mother’s side lived there as engineers, doctors, plantation managers, KNIL officers, and teachers. She grew up in The Hague, where the Indies culture is quite engrained in daily life. Her grandmother and mother regularly cooked Indies…
Sjoekje F. Sas(a)bone, LCSW, EMHA has served the mental health field since 1984 in various capacities. This includes serving as a volunteer, educator, administrator, philanthropist, board member, public speaker, and California Board Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW). Sjoekje has a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology, a Master’s degree in Social Work (MSW), an Executive Masters in…
I am a second-generation Indo, born in Jakarta. My parents, Anton F. Steenkamp and Christien Paulus Steenkamp, were born in Indonesia. In 1955, the family of five were repatriated to the Netherlands, where a younger sister was born. After seven years of cold winters and temperate summers in Den Haag, the family of parents, two…
Monica Cluff is a third-generation Indo born and raised in southern California. Daughter of Piet and Margaret Veerman, both Indos who immigrated separately to the US in 1960, she is a first generation American. She is the oldest of four children. Monica studied computer science both at Westmont College in Santa Barbara and Cal Poly…
Sierra Jacob is an MFA graduate at the University of Montana, where she received the Richard Hugo Memorial Scholarship for poetry. She is a third generation Indo and currently edits articles for the Indo Project. Her poetry has appeared in Cream City Review, Sonora Review, Yemassee, The Louisville Review, Hawai`i Pacific Review, Pacifica Literary Review…
Ingrid was born in Palembang, Sumatra and repatriated to Holland, celebrating her first birthday in Den Bosch. Right after her sixth birthday, her family immigrated to the U.S. and settled in the Bay Area, California. Five years later, at age eleven, her first poem was published and from that moment on, went on to create…