Maiden Voyages is a fascinating, unusual study of the centrality, impact and place of sea travel on the lives of women in Eastern Indonesia. It shows how women there travel constantly by sea, to move between islands, to urban centres and even overseas. In doing so, they negotiate and cross and re-make their social boundaries. In contrast to the dominant economic approach to migration, this book uses Eastern Indonesian women's own travel accounts to show how sea voyages recreate their identities.
The book is based on research of contemporary rural and semi-rural women in the East Nusa Tenggara province of Indonesia.This book is an original and valuable contribution to the debates on gender, subjectivity, and the local specificity. It aims to contribute to an understanding of women's mobility and spatial relations in Eastern Indonesia. It will be of interest to many, especially scholars of geography, migration, gender and microeconomics as well as of appeal to general readers.