5. Flying Away

The novel Keberangkatan [Departures] by Nh. Dini examines the history of the nation through the character of Elisa, a dark-skinned Indo who remains in Jakarta when the rest of her family returns to the Netherlands in the years right after independence. Elisa works at the new Indonesian airline, falls in love with a Javanese youth, and struggles to understand her identity in the context of the new nation. The novel ends with Elisa applying for a visa to join her family in the Netherlands. I argue Elisa complicates how Indo Women function within transnational spaces and offers an alternative narrative for understanding hybrid subaltern subject positions within postcolonial histories of the nation.