Rokeya Sakhawa Hossain

Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880-1932) was a Bengali writer, feminist, educator, and activist. Born in Rangpur, modern-day Bangladesh, Rokeya was raised in a family of intellectuals and government figures. Interested in literature from a young age, she was encouraged by her older sister Karimunnesa, a poet and social worker, to expand her linguistic knowledge beyond Arabic and Persian by learning Bengali and English. In 1898, Rokeya married an older magistrate from Bhagalpur, a widower who...See more

Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880-1932) was a Bengali writer, feminist, educator, and activist. Born in Rangpur, modern-day Bangladesh, Rokeya was raised in a family of intellectuals and government figures. Interested in literature from a young age, she was encouraged by her older sister Karimunnesa, a poet and social worker, to expand her linguistic knowledge beyond Arabic and Persian by learning Bengali and English. In 1898, Rokeya married an older magistrate from Bhagalpur, a widower who encouraged her to continue her education as well as to pursue the craft of writing. In 1902, she published an essay in Bengali, beginning a career that would soon flourish with Matichur (1905) and Sultana's Dream (1908), the latter of which has since been recognized as a groundbreaking work of science fiction and feminist utopianism. Following her husband's death, she founded the Sakhawat Memorial Girls' High School in his honor. Initially based in Bhagalpur, she moved the school to Calcutta in 1911 and acted as its head administrator until her death in 1932. Referred to honorifically as Begum Rokeya, she spent the remainder of her life as a tireless advocate for the rights of Bengalis and Muslim women. See less