Indonesia Conference Directory

Diversity is an inevitable fact that exist in Indonesia-s society. Indonesia is composed by tremendeous ethnic identities that established diversity in its social life. It then uses to become a pride instead of the problems in Indonesia-s societal life. Literary works as the mirror of the social reality documented it so well. Many literary works exposed the ethnic otherness either to persuade readers to maintain the diversity altogether to raise a mutual respect and tolerance towards differences and similarities in life, or to construct the identity to resist or to sustain racism. Kesaksian Bumi Anoa is one of the literary works that expose the ethnic diversity in the Southeast Sulawesi as one province in Indonesia. It is a collected poems consisted of five poems written by local writers and published in 2018. However, this study focused on four poems that vividly depicted the ethnic lifes in Southeast Sulawesi, namely; Kesaksian di Negeri Butuni by La Ode Gusman Nasiru, Manusia Sama di Laut Buton by Uniawati, Puncak Rindu Sabhampolulu by Mas Jaya, and Jejak Sunyi di Masjid Muna by Wa Ode Nur Iman. Each piece of the collected poems reflected the ethnic identity in the Southeast Sulawesi through the problematic life perceived by the fiction-characters displayed in the poems. By using representation theory and semiotic analysis, this study reveals the ethnic identities in four poems that depicted Muna, Buton, Bajau, Moronene-s ethnic identities. Those are pictured through the excerpt of history, social system, local language, and local wisdoms that enable us to see and understand the philosophy of their lifes and differences and similarities among them. These poems have been a document that displayed the sprit of the given era.