Fruits of freedom: Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain's writings as genre fiction

A majority of Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s narrative writings can be categorized as genre fiction, which she wrote in a whole variety of Bengali-language periodicals; she also wrote one classic piece of genre fiction in English, ‘Sultana’s Dream,’ in an Indian periodical, The Indian Ladies’ Magazine. Hossain wrote as a cosmopolitan, transcultural, South Asian, and Bengali Muslim writer. She became a byword for Bengali women’s activism and writing, straddling religions, while maintaining a strong identity as a Muslim writer, activist, and woman. This chapter argues that Hossain needs to be analysed as a hybrid, speculative writer, adroitly and supply engaged in the processes of translation and transculturation as much as in innovative creation. Gender justice, freedom from colonialism, and the rights of women, I argue, are ringing, recurring themes in her oeuvre. The chapter places Hossain’s oeuvre in the context of genre fiction in Bengali, Indian, and global contexts. Adventurous mobilities across cultural, historical, geographical, and literary knowledge, I argue, characterize Hossain’s work.