The Work of Romance

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.