Victorious Wives: The Disguised Heroine in 19th-Century Malay Syair

Mulaika Hijjas's book "Victorious Wives: The Disguised Heroine in Nineteenth-Century Malay Syair" uses Malay syair of the Riau Archipelago as a basis to maintain that women engaged extensively with written literature, both as readers and writers.

Mulaika, a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of the Languages and Cultures of South East Asia at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, joins us to talk about her book and research on secular writing and gender in the Malay literary tradition, and why she believes women in the 19th century were "not just fryers of bananas and sweet potatoes".