SPIDER-MOTHER: THE FICTION AND POLITICS

“Groundbreaking…vitally relevant today…fine translations of these important texts.” —Amitav Ghosh, author, most recently of Smoke and Ashes: Opium’s Hidden Histories

“A gorgeous, urgent compilation of the feminist, decolonizing vision of Rokeya Hossain, and of her understanding that the best speculative fiction poses a challenge to the violence of the present.” —Siddhartha Deb, author of The Light at the End of the World

“Efficiently and affectionately introduced and translated, this book will, at last, ferry Begum Rokeya’s uncommon imagination to new readers.” —Sumana Roy, author of How I Became a Tree and Provincials

Pioneering Indian Muslim feminist Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain wrote speculative fiction, manifestoes, radical reportage, and incisive essays that transformed her experience of enforced segregation into unique interventions against gender oppression everywhere. Her radical imagination links the realities of living in a British colony to the technological and scientific breakthroughs of her time, the effects of hauntingly pervasive systems of sexual domination, and collective dreams of the future, forging a visionary, experimental body of work. Alongside Rokeya’s pathbreaking feminist science fiction story “Sultana’s Dream,” this volume features fresh and exciting new translations of her key Bengali writings and a superbly informative introduction to her life and work. If her contemporary B. R. Ambedkar urged the “annihilation of caste,” Rokeya demands nothing less than the annihilation of sexism, with education as the primary instrument of this revolution. Her brilliant wit and creativity reflect profoundly on the complexities of undoing deep-seated gender supremacy and summon her readers to imagine hitherto undreamed freedoms.

ROKEYA SAKHAWAT HOSSAIN (1880–1932) was born in present-day Bangladesh, then part of colonial India. Despite being deprived of formal education, she became a prominent writer, activist, and educator. The web of her life spanned from the minutiae of running a girls’ school in Kolkata to struggles for women’s emancipation on the national and world stage.

BEN BAER is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Princeton University. He translated The Tale of Hansuli Turn by Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay from Bengali. Baer’s most recent book is Indigenous Vanguards: Education, National Liberation, and the Limits of Modernism.

SMARAN DAYAL is Assistant Professor of Literature at Stevens Institute of Technology. A scholar of American and postcolonial literature, Dayal is co-editor of Fictions of America: The Book of Firsts and is working on a book titled Afrofutures, Atlantic Pasts: Decolonial Revisions in African American Science Fiction.

CHITRA GANESH has developed a body of work rooted in drawing and painting, which has evolved to encompass animations, wall drawings, collages, computer generated imagery, video, and sculpture. Her work has been widely exhibited in the United States and internationally, including solo shows at Brooklyn Museum, New York; MoMA PS1, New York; The Rubin Museum of Art, New York; The Andy Warhol Museum, Pennsylvania; and Gothenburg Kunsthalle, Sweden.

SHAHANA HANIF represents New York City’s 39th Council District. She is the first Bangladeshi and Muslim woman elected to the New York City Council and the first woman to represent the 39th District. Before her election, Council Member Hanif served as the Director of Organizing and Community Engagement in the office of former District 39 Council Member Brad Lander.