Tjalie Robinson - Later Years

Later Years

In search of a global vision on Indo culture and in a continued effort to resist assimilation Tjalie Robinson traveled to Latin America where he compared the Indo community with the racially mixed people of that continent. Already in the Dutch East Indies he had admired the status of the Creole language Papiamento and the cultural expressions of the Dutch Antilles. He also sympathised with the philosophical writings of the Spanish essayist Jose Ortega y Gasset, an outspoken proponent of perspectivism and in 1961 even initiated the creation of an Indo enclave in Spain, named 'El Atabal'.

Later he moved to the USA (1963–1968) and lived in Whittier, California, where he founded 'The American Tong Tong’. He felt there was less resistance in the USA to ethnic profiling of minorities and to create a cultural sanctuary for Indos he set up the Indo Community Center 'De Soos' in Victorville, near Los Angeles, which only allowed membership to people that were also subscribed to the 'American Tong Tong' magazine.

Already before his emigration to the USA he was full of admiration for multi-cultural New York and wrote: "All these different ethnic minorities (in New York City) are allowed to be who they are (only in Holland we still believe in the folly of assimilation) and - strange as it may sound - they are all American. And now look at how richly they affect New York. All these people that can remain true to themselves, give their own flair and character to American life."

His literary work found comparisons with Flannery O'Connor, writer of Mystery and Manners. Occasional Prose. (as well as other Southern United States authors like Faulkner and Eudora Welty), who appropriately wrote that "great talent can put a small local history into a universal light". In his analysis of Tjalie Robinson professor E.M.Beekman also pointed out that he quite often cited or referred to American authors like: Mark Twain, Henry Miller, Tennessee Williams, T.S.Eliot and even Robert Frost when he was still an unknown writer in Europe.

To save the Dutch 'Tong Tong' magazine that was suffering from a dwindling number of subscribers he returned to the Netherlands in 1968, where he spent the final years of his life. Tjalie Robinson died in 1974. The necrology of this "avant garde visionary" reads: "In The Hague at the age of 63 Indo journalist and author Tjalie Robinson passed away. After his return from Indonesia he had wholeheartedly given his all to preserve the unique identity of the Indo community in the Netherlands. Many of his endeavours encountered resistance, but appreciation was paramount."

His ashes were scattered in the Java Sea at Sunda Kelapa in Jakarta the same year. His son recalls: "Then - under the soft sounds of Kroncong music - the urn was slowly emptied into the sea. Tjalie was home."