Mobility Humanities

This article connects mobility studies and disability studies in analysing the short story “Bukan Yem” (in English, “Maybe Not Yem”) written by Etik Juwita. The story depicts the journey of Indonesian women migrant workers returning to their hometowns. Juwita, who is also a migrant worker, presents the character Yem, a seemingly mad woman who accompanies the protagonist along the treacherous journey to her village through the coastal north route along the Java Island. This paper analyses the main character in the story, her movement as she makes her journey home, and the “mad” woman character who accompanies her. The paper argues that the story “Maybe Not Yem” reconfigures madness as literary aesthetics in two ways: first, by disturbing the binary between sanity and insanity, and second, by asserting the character’s agency via her mobility. This paper reveals the interconnection between mobility studies and disability studies to reassess madness as literary aesthetics and to reinforce ideas of agency of the mobile subject.