Reading Begum Rokeya, again and always, The Daily Star
Review of 'Spider-Mother: The Fiction and Politics of Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain', (Warbler Press Annotated Edition, 2024) edited by Ben Baer and Smaran Dayal
Begum Rokeya was once described as a "Spider Mother" (makar-mata or makarsha janani) in her biographical account but there is nothing sinister in this metaphor. The image of the spider here symbolises the quiet, patient, and selfless labour of an educator, caring for children who were not her own. Shamsunnahar Mahmud, her close co-worker, wrote: "Day after day in this way, with the blood of her own breast, Spider Mother began to revive hundreds of baby spiders into new life."
This hauntingly beautiful image stayed. It became the title of Ben Baer and Smaran Dayal's book, Spider Mother: The Fiction and Politics of Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain-a tribute to Rokeya's tireless fight for women's education, her bold feminist imagination, and her deep emotional impact on generations of women and girls who came after her. Spider-Mother brings together a curated selection of Rokeya's most compelling fictional and political writings. The editors have chosen works that exemplify her reflective and speculative engagements with the world around her, texts that pushed against the boundaries of how gender, religion, science, and power were conventionally discussed.
From the visionary techno-utopia of "Sultana's Dream" to the sharp critique of gendered seclusion in "Burka'', from reimagining biblical allegory in "Fruit of Knowledge" to interrogating the very structures that shape a woman's voice in "Woman Prisoner", the collection captures Rokeya's literary range and radical insights. The writings are arranged in a largely chronological order except for "Sultana's Dream", her only English-language fiction. One of the key intentions of this book is to make her work accessible to a wider, multilingual readership. The editors and translators have taken special care to preserve the distinctiveness of Rokeya's style in translation, believing that her clarity, rhythm, and rhetorical power are essential to the impact of her ideas. Their goal was not to smooth out or modernise her voice, but to retain the integrity and resonance of the original texts, allowing readers to experience both the substance and style of Rokeya's thinking.