Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s Buru Quartet, a landmark work by the Indonesian author, can be read as a postcolonial coming-of-age novel set in Asia. Inspired by the life of Tirto Adhi Soerjo, a pioneer of Malay-language journalism in Indonesia, the series centers on the character of Minke, who evolves from a student enamored with European culture at a prestigious Dutch high school in Surabaya into a charismatic nationalist leader. Offering a panoramic depiction of late 19th to early 20th-century Dutch East Indies society, the novels, while distinctly anti-colonial, acknowledge the undeniable role of the colonial system in shaping native elites. Two significant aspects are highlighted: the European-style education provided to indigenous people and the assistance and support from Dutch Ethical Policy advocates in promoting native self-governance.

As a postcolonial coming-of-age narrative, The Buru Quartet frames personal growth as synonymous with the emergence of nationalist consciousness. However, rather than presenting a simplistic critique of colonialism, it underscores the complex, ambivalent relationship between individuals and the colonial system. This nuanced exploration challenges monolithic anti-colonial perspectives, offering a deeper reflection on historical transformations.

The quartet’s historical and political context further enriches its significance. Written during Pramoedya’s imprisonment following the 1965 coup in Indonesia, the novels express his anxiety about Indonesia’s descent into a neo-colonial trap under Suharto’s regime. They also engage with Cold War geopolitics and the external interventions undermining Southeast Asian nations’ paths to self-determination. In this sense, The Buru Quartet redefines the coming-of-age novel not simply as anti-colonial propaganda but as a search for national direction through historical retrospection. It thus subverts the Eurocentric framework traditionally associated with the genre, offering new possibilities for postcolonial literary discourse.

This paper explores Crónica de uma Travessia by Luís Cardoso (b. 1958, Cailaco, East Timor) as a multifaceted life-narrative of colonial and postcolonial identity formation in Timor-Leste, positioning it within the frameworks of the colonial Entwicklungsroman, the (boarding) school novel or even, bearing in mind the Catholic/colonial millieu, a hypothetical missionary school novel. The novel offers a complex portrayal of the emergence of literary and historical consciousness through the protagonist’s perspective, developing within the slowness of colonial time yet marked by the rapid accumulation of historical and anthropological information. Cardoso's narrative style, characterized by both historical detail and ironic commentary, reflects a local Timorese perspective seeking recognition within a broader Lusophone literary tradition. By tracing the protagonist’s experiences within Catholic/colonial educational institutions, the novel does not explicitly critique the role of schooling as a tool of cultural assimilation and imperial epistemology—often found in postcolonial narratives—but rather seems to propose the Catholic and Portuguese colonial dimensions of Timorese identity as elements to be integrated into a new, composite sense of Timorese self. Two key examples of this dynamic include how Cardoso reconfigures historical memory through the character of the protagonist’s father, a symbolic figure who conflates Portuguese colonial authority with sacred Mambai tradition, and also the novel’s fixation on names and naming practices in Portuguese, which underscores a deeper reflection on identity and memory in Portuguese-speaking Asia.

Childcare in India reflects practices drawn from various religious traditions and social customs, ranging from Ayurvedic to Islamic practices associated with childcare, colonial education policy to post-independence national policies. The contemporary disciplining systems therefore reflect everything from the child-centeredness of Ayurvedic texts discouraging harsh speech and threats towards the child to practices drawn from colonial pedagogy, which considered the colonized subject— child to be inherently sinful needing socialization to overcome their savage nature. In a webinar, Spyros Soyrou invites Childhood Studies scholars to reflect upon the implications of Rob Nixon’s concept of slow violence (originally an ecocritical theory) as inflicted on children and childhood. This paper contextualizes slow violence within certain disciplining practices and explores how the pre and post-independence novels such as The Crooked Line by Ismat Chugtai, Mohanaswami by Vasudhendra and Daughter's Daughter by Mrinal Pande reflect colonial, postcolonial and decolonial parenting practices. It also analyses the texts for possible arguments for overcoming them in favor of decolonial, "gentle" parenting.