Sultana's Dream Lesson Plan

Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, also known as Begum Rokeya (Begum is a feminine honorific and not an official part of Rokeya Hossain's name), was a Bengali Muslim feminist writer who wrote essays, novels, and short stories on the state of women's rights in British colonial India and women's liberation. Born in 1880 into an upper-class family, Rokeya had a father who taught both her and her sister Arabic, Persian, English, and Bengali, although he encouraged the two young women to focus on studying Arabic and Persian. At age eighteen, Rokeya married Khan Bahadur Sakhawat Hossain. Her husband encouraged Rokeya to continue writing and to pursue writing in Bengali as well as English. In 1905, while...