In this paper, I shall compare how two educated women wrote autobiographical fiction about enormous social and political changes which occurred in Indonesian and Malay society around the gaining of political independence. The women novelists display a keen awareness of key points in history and incorporate such concerns directly into their novels. These are therefore very rich sources of collective cultural memory for Malays and Sundanese - Indonesians alike. Suwarsih Djojopuspito's Manusia Bebas (1985) (Freed Souls) is set in the 1930s and Hamidah Hassan's Meniti Pelangi (1964) (To Cross a Rainbow) in the 1950s. Both books are significant in the canon of women's writing and classics of their kind. A testimony of this nature from Sunda indicates reveals the awareness of intellectuals in the region, revealed through the role of the selfless nationalist school teachers who are the focus of the plot of Manusia Bebas. The husbands of both authors were nationalist activists but their wives often displayed a different kind of vision of their future. For Suwarsih, the focus of her heroine, Sulastri's life is survival. For Hamidah Hassan's heroine, Milah, who like herself, was the Head of the Kaum Ibu, the women's section of the Malay political party, UMNO, in Singapore, it is more how Malays should focus their energies, although survival is still an important issue in post-war Singapore. The women's point of view which directs these two novels supplies vital testimony of the role of women in the global movement of nationalism. Equally important is their significance within the global movement of feminism.