Trespassing: The Subversive Travel of Indonesian Women in Literature and Performance

Abstract

This volume explores how Indonesian women writers and artists challenge the boundaries of home, nation, and identity through acts of movement, both real and imagined. Moving across novels, films, performance, and lived experience, Jennifer Goodlander introduces ‘trespassing’ as a framework for understanding how women navigate spaces where they are not expected to belong. Organized around modes of travel—by foot, train, boat, and plane—the book reveals how mobility becomes a form of resistance, enabling women to redefine themselves beyond the constraints of tradition, gender roles, and national expectations. From wandering protagonists to globally circulating artists, these stories foreground travel as a site of agency and transformation. Blending literary analysis with ethnography and performance studies, this volume offers a dynamic, interdisciplinary account of Indonesian women’s creativity. It will appeal to scholars and students of gender studies, Southeast Asian studies, literature, and performance, while remaining accessible to general readers interested in global women’s voices and contemporary Indonesian culture.