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This interview is the fourth and and final interview in a short series of podcasts about the mass violence in Indonesia.\xa0 Earlier this year I talked with Geoff Robinson, Jess Melvin and Kate McGregor and Annie Pohlman about their works.\n\nAll of them have written thoughtful, carefully researched and richly detailed analyses of the violence.\xa0 Each of them shared a similar interest in the causes and nature of the violence.\xa0 While their approaches varied, each attempted to shed new light on events which have been hidden or misrepresented.\n\nVannessa Hearman, in her new book\xa0Unmarked Graves: Death and Survival in the Anti-Communist Violence in East Java, Indonesia (NUS Press, 2018), continues this effort.\xa0 By focusing on East Java, Hearman looks at the violence from another angle, allowing us to compare how different regions descended into violence.\xa0 Reading her book together with Melvin\u2019s offers us a fuller understanding of the relationship between high-level actors and local officials and between center and periphery.\xa0 In particular, her analysis of the relationship between the army and non-state actors was eye-opening.\n\nBut Hearman offers much more than this.\xa0 The book, largely based on extensive interviews Hearman conducted over the course of years, recounts the violence on an individual level.\xa0 Hearman helps us understand how those who were targeted with murder tried to escape.\xa0 She documents the networks of safe houses, couriers and information sources that emerged within days of the violence.\xa0 She demonstrates how the Communist Party in East Java tried to understand and respond to the violence, reminding us that, in Indonesia, violence was a process, not an event.\xa0 And she shows how the army eventually destroyed the Party\u2019s attempt to create a safe space, using violence that affected not only the communists, but other citizens who lived in the region.\xa0 It\u2019s a richly textured, thoroughly researched and ultimately moving portrayal of people trying to understand how their world was falling apart.\n\n\n\nKelly McFall\xa0is Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at Newman University. He\u2019s the author of four modules in the\xa0Reacting to the Past\xa0series, including\xa0The Needs of Others: Human Rights, International Organizations and Intervention in Rwanda,\xa01994.\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices\nSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/genocide-studies