Copyright

Jennifer Goodlander

Published On

2026-08-27

Language

  • English

Print Length

20 pages

THEMA

  • JBSF1
  • D
  • AFKP
  • 1FMN
  • 5TFK

BISAC

  • SOC028000
  • LIT004290
  • ART019020
  • ART057000
  • ART060000

Keywords

  • women
  • literature
  • performance
  • film
  • Global Asia
  • Indonesia

6. Going Home

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

Unlike the other works in this book, Pulang [Home] by Leila S. Chudori, focused on ideas of home and a return to Indonesia. The story spans multiple generations and shifts narrators, but at the center is the story of Lintang, who was born in Paris to an Indonesian exile and a French mother. Lintang only knows Indonesia through food and the puppet stories her father and his friends tell her. She travels to Indonesia to make a documentary about her father and to discover her homeland. Throughout, the novel offers a contrast to ideas of "home" and "wandering" that are introduced in Chapter Two. By destabilizing ideas of place and home the novel offers insight into identity and belonging, but also suggests that home is an idea based in personal agency rather than a nation.

Contributors

Jennifer Goodlander

(author)
Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre and Drama at Indiana University Bloomington
Director of the Southeast Asian and ASEAN Studies Program at Indiana University Bloomington
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7520-6386

Jennifer Goodlander is an Associate Professor at Indiana University-Bloomington in the Department of Theatre and Drama and also Director of the Southeast Asian and ASEAN Studies Program. Jennifer has published numerous articles and two books: Women in the Shadows: Gender, Puppets, and the Power of Tradition in Bali (Ohio University Press, 2016) and Puppets and Cities: Articulating Identities in Southeast Asia (Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2018). Jennifer remains active as a theatre director and puppeteer and has performed Balinese wayang kulit, or shadow puppetry, at international festivals and around the United States.