In the Malay print romance industry, love stories are far more than entertainment. Emerging in the late 1980s amidst rapid social and cultural change, the genre gained popularity and continues to thrive, functioning as diversion, medicine, identity creation, and destiny for thousands of women. Above all, it constitutes serious work.

Malay women have established themselves as authors, editors, publishers, and devoted readers within the romance literary landscape, navigating between Islamic teachings about gender and the promises of modernity. Across five years of ethnographic fieldwork in bookstores, coffee shops, publishing houses, and bookfairs, Alicia Izharuddin interviewed hundreds of women who produce and consume Malay romances in print and online. Their work centers on a fundamental question: How should romantic love be expressed, learned, regulated, and shared in contemporary Muslim society? Izharuddin reveals that for these women, romance and its pursuit represent a moral—even religious—calling. Through close engagement with love stories, she uncovers how readers develop new tools for problem-solving and self-transformation that extend far beyond temporary escape. Such narratives create a distinct form of gendered labor for women seeking both marital and personal fulfillment.

The Work of Romance determines how romance fiction performs hidden yet vital cultural work and offers fresh insights into the multifaceted nature of women’s emotional and intellectual labor. It makes a pioneering contribution to gender studies, feminist literary history, and the sociology of print culture in Asia and Muslim-majority societies.

• Alicia Izharuddin, Author

  Alicia Izharuddin is senior visiting fellow in gender and sexuality at the National University of Singapore.

• Allison Alexy, Series Editor

  Allison Alexy is assistant professor in the Department of Women’s Studies and the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan.

• The Work of Romance is truly brilliant. Alicia Izharuddin positions Malay romance literature within the social and cultural contexts of increased agency and social mobility for women. She demonstrates how romance writing/reading is much more than leisure: It is work, both in its production and dissemination but also in its application to women’s everyday experiences. While romance can be personally transformative, it nonetheless supplies a moral narrative and emotional structure for accepting and living with gendered inequality. Her book constitutes a significant contribution to the scholarship on romance literature.
  —Nancy J. Smith-Hefner, Boston University