Marking this one instead of the shorter, short-story-only version.

I enjoyed the context placed on the short story - both with the stories of Begum Rokeya's life, but also selections from her condemnation of purdah, that showed just how bad it was (most of my prior context was from the height of Mughal power, when purdah was interpreted much more loosely for elite women). The commentary also pointed out that interpreting familial relations to be much broader in Sultana's Dream was also a condemnation of purdah, but less obvious to those not raised in it.

Most utopic fiction is anti-war, but I enjoyed the concepts of solar energy in the story. Also anti-police state.

The publication date was 1993 in the edition I read - and it read so pre-9/11 that it was sweet. Another snapshot in time.
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Short and packs a punch.

Written by a Bengali Muslim woman, this satirical short story imagines a world where women are allowed to live to their fullest intellectual and economic potential. A sultan's wife travels to LadyLand, where the women run the world, for lack of a better term.

It was written in 1905.

This story was written, it was published, but more astonishingly, it survived. Science fiction is a testament not only to who we are, but who we can be. It allows us to shed our supposed rigid social barriers and imagine who we could be if we didn't have those constraints. Here is a woman of colour imagining a future in which other women of colour exist, contribute, are listened to, are an integral piece of society.

I... honestly really don't like when people say sexist / racist / homophobic comments or views were just 'products of their time'. Sure they were. But we had allies and we've had people who were at the forefront of all of that prejudice since the beginning and we will always have people like that.

Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain is one such example.

Imagine reading this the year it was published. Feeling validated, feeling seen, feeling as if you could've come from LadyLand, as if you were suddenly made of star stuff, infinite in all your opportunities.

This story isn't just important 'for its time', it's important because it survived. ( )

Sultana's Dream is actually a short story and not a whole book, which I didn't realize until it came to an abrupt end. It's about a woman's dream of an utopian society of women who took over the running of their from the men after they suffered a massive military defeat. The story of how the women came to power is my favorite part of the story but it also goes into how they live and what it was like before the women took over.

I love the idea of these old feminist utopian stories but I also get the fault in their ideas. Women are not inherently better than men, we are simply socialized to think of community and family before ourselves, to be as docile as society can get away with making us, and that giving of ourselves is a higher virtue than taking power. Not all women listen to society and we have come a long way away from this as a gender in Western society while some others are still underived more strict patriarchal societies. I appreciated the mention that good leaders who happen to be women improve things over bad leaders who happen to be men, despite internal biases, that was mentioned in Half the Sky. They dont quite put it that way, but that was my take away from their explamation. It's not so much that one gender is better than the other but that those who believe in inherent superiority of any group tend to mistreat those they believe themselves to be superior than. Hence the reversal of roles in this book but not an egalitarian nor a merit based society.

Of course, merit based anything is so biased that I hesitate to believe anyone sees it clearly. There have been studies that those with the most merit are actually those who look and think most like the person making the decision. Perhaps this is how we'be ended up with so many diversity campaigns, we must make a special effort to assess merit in those we are less like because different points of view consistently improve things for the rest of us, even if it's only that they sharpen our argument.

Getting back to the book, though. This is a fun little story about a feminist utopia, a place where women rule over men in the same fashion women were ruled when it was written in 1905. ( )

Reading Sultana's Dream at midnight had wondrous effects on me. Not only did I float in her utopian 'Lady land', but enjoyed it so much as to really dream of being in one. I was stunned in the first few pages with her creative and scientific bend of mind. To think and expound scientific temperament way back in 1905 reveals what an intelligent woman she was! While reading her ideas about solar energy and the cloud storage made me think of her exceptional imaginary powers of mind. I am yet to begin with 'Padmarag', the other collection of stories from later half of the book. I am in love with Begum Rokeya and her daring vision. To think that I always lamented the fact about lack of Indian Feminists and here she is, in all her shining glory. I am so glad she survives and inspires so many.

The other story, Padmarag, didn't really entice me much except when I came to the last 10 pages. Some fierce writing on independent women is in there. I have so much respect and awe for Begum Rokeya for her strong views about society and women, what freedom could do for women and how the coming years would be a new life for millions who would learn to live on their own, given an opportunity to resign from their fate dedicated only to kitchen and marriage. If only the commercial writers from today read her work and learn a thing or two about portraying women as destitute in their fictional works, Indian writing would reach new heights. ( )

This is a fascinating collection of work written by three near east feminists. It's short and concise.

Highly recommended. ( )