If I could pack two things I love to for my own type of bliss, it would be literature and travel. Just like what I’m indulging in with the current book I’m reading right now by Intan Paramaditha called Gentayangan. Translated into English, gentayangan literally means to roam about, never being in one place, and always searching. This is exactly the type of experience mbak Intan presents with her novel, that we can pick whichever way our choices lead us along with our red sparkly shoes. To me, she is breaking boundaries with this book, packaging a “Choose Your Own Adventure Tale” with feminist spunk and touches of folklore that doesn’t throw you off.

I read an interview that she did with Vice Indonesia, where part of breaking boundaries is through her notion of travel that I think a lot of us forget. We romanticize travel too much sometimes that we are oblivious to the fact that perhaps only the affluent can afford to do so by choice, to which she strongly related to her defiance of the movie we loved so much back in the day a.k.a Eat, Pray, Love. As a result, mbak Intan introduces us to places like New York for example, and the lives of its immigrants to give us a little knock on the head that travel is more than its popularized interpretations. It can open our eyes to various issues in culture, power relations, identity and so much more.

Thank you, mbak Intan for this book!

Good girls go to heaven
Bad girls go wandering