Sista!

If you have read Black women writers, you would know that their writing is fierce, inspiring, creative and bold. They write with compassion and conviction, almost always to uplift one another and nurture the sisterhood, especially Black sisterhood. You can only imagine how much more intense and interesting the writing becomes when an anthology brings together a constellation of queer Black women writers. As the cover promises, Sista! is a brilliant collection of stories, poems, personal essays, (and even an interview) by and about queer women of African and Caribbean descent  with a connection to UK. 

While every contribution deserves recognition, a few pieces stood out to me for their authenticity, enviable audacity, and the incandescent freedom that radiated from their words. They are as follows:

  1. In her deeply personal essay, Not White, Not Ever: a Black Lesbian Lament, Kesiena Boom, a mixed-race, Black, lesbian feminist writer, reflects on the trials and tribulations of dating white women, and how race can be both, a catalyst to bring people together and one that also separates them, but can never be ignored. She also describes her failed attempts at having relationships with Black women and wonders what it takes for Black lesbians to seek and sustain romantic relationships and whether the overtly white lesbian landscape itself becomes a deterrent for Black women in visualising and creating meaningful partnerships.
  2. Author of 8 books and an inspirational Public Speaker, Valerie Mason-John’s Those Were The Daze, is a heartfelt rendition of what it means to be an elder of the Black Queer community. She revisits her struggles as a lesbian in the 80s including how her accidental coming out created both opportunities and hardships. She carefully explains her arrogance then which she adopted as an armour to tide over the anti-queer sentiment and reminds us in the most blistering way, how now more than ever, queer communities and queer people must look beyond racial, ethnic, religious and other socioeconomic differences and soldier on together as a singular powerful force.
  3. Tamara McFarlane’s poems are tender and evocative, with an equal measure of romance, sensuality and poignancy.
  4. Nea Semba’s tour de force essay, Supermalt, Self Love and Sexuality, is a rambunctious celebration of Black womanhood and the intersections between Black and Queer feminism. In this carefully constructed piece, the author, a non binary queer African, describes the significance of Black woman’s hair as an expression of her independence, authority, Blackness and queerness. Semba also confronts uncomfortable truths, including the persistent perception of queerness as a white thing and the tendency to attribute homophobia solely to religion while overlooking the roles of toxic masculinity and colonialism.
  5. In To be Femme: Lesbian Guerrilla Soldier, Chardine Taylor-Stone, an award winning cultural producer and feminist activist, succinctly elucidates what it means to be Femme and how embodying it as a queer woman of colour can itself be a radical act of feminism.
  6. Nigerian-British writer and visual scholar, Sokari Ekine’s Love in the Age [of] Evolution, is a hopeful and deeply moving reflection on dating, intimacy and discovering love at the age of 67. The essay brims with excitement and euphoria but simultaneously brings in the reality of dating with maturity and intention. She strongly asserts against the notion of age being considered a disability in the cis-normative world and how Black queer women are changing this very notion with their zest for romance, desire and companionship.

Sista!, edited by Phyll Opoku-Gyimah, Rikki Beadle-Blair and John R Gordon, is an illuminating anthology about lives and experiences that may initially seem distant from our own, but through them they reveal universal truths about reclaiming authority, autonomy and agency. The women writers bring in their unfiltered voices portraying their vulnerability and resilience and aren’t afraid to conceal their mistakes and shortcomings. The stories embolden us with extraordinary power, inviting us to restructure and recalibrate our own lives. They emerge from moments of existential crisis, yet arrive at places of balance and affirmation.

Few anthologies possess the ability to alter the way we see ourselves and the world. Sista! is one of them. It has the potential to change you at the molecular level, not because these writers set out to transform you, but because their stories have that innate ability to accomplish that quietly and organically. 

I end the review with this quote from Kayza Rose’s essay, When is the right time?,

“I do hope we will come to a time where ‘coming out’ isn’t needed, and that being SGL (same gender loving) will be one of the norms of society. We still have a long way to go… but I do hope!”

~ JUST A GAY BOY. 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion

Razia is your typical teenager navigating high school, friendships and parental interference. Her life has been confined to the neighbourhood of Corona in Queens. Her friends are the children of her parent’s friends and family. Her worldview is restricted and is overshadowed by various domestic, social and cultural pressures. Despite this, she struggles to maintain a balanced outlook and tries her hand at being a rebellious teenager though in a very muted way with the help of her best friend, Taslima. When she begins at Stuyvesant, she easily befriends Angela who with her effervescent personality unknowingly guides Razia into knowing herself better. Together they explore New York City and their friendship soon blossoms into a romantic relationship. However, the biggest hurdles for Razia are that it is still the 1980s and the word lesbian is being whispered as if it were an abomination. Also, Razia is a Pakistani American whose Pakistani parents, and the heritage they fiercely uphold, are determined to see that she turns out to be a good, straight, Allah-fearing, namaz-reading, marriage and children ready, perfect Pakistani girl. 

The novel is a quintessential coming-of-age as well as a coming-out story of a Muslim girl who has been raised in a closely knit and conservative community. Culture, tradition and religion form central parts of her upbringing and Razia does adhere to it wholeheartedly. However, at the same time she notices the glaring patriarchy and misogyny that is prevalent in many Muslim households. She questions these systems that continue to oppress women and keep them subservient to the men in their families and communities. In a particularly disturbing scene of domestic violence, Razia sees how her otherwise servile mother shows up with remarkable emotional acumen, empathy and support for the victim. However, as much as Razia and her mother understand and love each other, they do find themselves at crossroads when it comes to the question of a woman’s independence and why it’s always conditional and never absolute in the Muslim Pakistani community.

Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion, written by Bushra Rehman, a queer Pakistani American writer, is a very engaging story of a South Asian girl in the late 1980s America discovering her sexuality. The pages are lush with the rich depictions of Muslim culture and traditions and at the same time, the author has juxtaposed it with its strictness, control and blind faith without condemnation or criticism, instead has brought a much needed nuance and sensitivity to the discussion. The author has repeatedly expressed the difference in the perception of the world for Razia’s parents who always think of themselves as Pakistani first and that of Razia, who considers herself to be American first. This hyphenated existence invariably becomes a part of Razia’s psyche and personality which the world around her refuses to acknowledge and Rehman has deftly woven that conflict into the narrative. 

The story is deliberately slow-paced and it chooses to meander into Razia’s daily routine and the nature of her friendships. We become witness to her gradual transformation and simultaneous buildup of angst, frustration and anxiety. However, the climax did feel antithetical to the rest of the book because it felt unintentionally fast-paced, chaotic and a tad superfluous. As a reader, I remained sceptical and surprised at Angela’s approach as she dealt with Razia’s meltdown. Their relationship which formed the core of Razia’s rebellious awakening felt inconsequential in the final moments. Also, I felt a wave of incompleteness wash over me and I was left with numerous unanswered questions. I hope there will be a sequel to Razia’s shenanigans. 

Even with its uneven ending, Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion, is well worth reading for its tender, layered exploration of faith, belonging and queer Muslim girlhood. 

~ JUST A GAY BOY. 🌈🌈

Too Much Lip

📍 Bundjalung Country, Australia 🇦🇺 

Kerry Salter has returned to her hometown of Durrongo to see her ailing grandfather Pop. But she was also running away from her life in the city and had literally done that on a stolen motorbike. The Salters are a dysfunctional family with strained relationships and overbearing personalities. Her mother, Pretty Mary, prefers to drink away her problems rather than confront the unresolved grief related to the death of her husband and her daughter Donna. Her elder brother, Ken, is an openly chauvinistic, misogynistic man who wouldn’t shy away from violence to prove his points. His relationship with his son, Donny, is marked by neglect, condescension and emotional abuse leaving Donny grappling with anorexia and deep self-doubt. In contrast, Kerry’s younger brother, Black Superman stands, who lives in Sydney with his husband and their foster children. He emerges as the rare voice of reason, wisdom, patience and maturity within the chaos.

As the Salters wrestle with tragedy, loss and suppressed trauma, they are forced to endure the greedy shenanigans of the local mayor, Jim Buckley, who is determined to seize their ancestral land. The Salters and their wider community of Blackfellas, the original inhabitants of Durrongo, refuse to let their sacred land be taken away, especially by a system rooted in colonial entitlement and oppression.

Kerry is caught unawares in the middle of this drama and her original plan of putting up a brief appearance morphs into a prolonged, endless stay. During this time, she reconnects with an old friend, Steve, a whitefella. While she is trying to make sense of her feelings for him, she stumbles upon a secret so unbelievable and implausible, that it sets off a chain reaction. What follows is the opening of a Pandora’s box of dirty, unconscionable, disturbing and deeply unsettling truths that threaten to tear the family apart.

Too Much Lip is a brave, unapologetic commentary on many evils plaguing our society, such as abuse and violence against women and children, pedophilia, patriarchy and systemic racism. It lays bare the ongoing discrimination faced by the Indigenous communities simply for existing, while also interrogating the violent legacy of settler colonialism. Through its women characters, the narrative also reveals the internalised patriarchy, misogyny and sexism that women have come to harbour and how an act of violence committed by a male family member is always dismissed or trivialised, while victims are shamed into silence and submission.

None of the characters in the book are conventionally likeable and each has been rendered in shades of grey. Kerry herself is feckless, indecisive, wayward and unmoored, yet capable of leading with empathy and stoicism when it matters most. Interestingly, while she is positioned as the protagonist, another character introduced in the later half of the book emerges as more compelling with their clarity, assertiveness, and fortitude standing as an antithesis of Kerry. 

The author, Melissa Lucashenko, is an Indigenous Australian and her heritage is Bundjalung and Ukrainian. She is a prolific writer of adult literary fiction and nonfiction and has been the recipient of various Australian and international literature awards. Too Much Lip won the Miles Franklin Literary award in 2019 while it was shortlisted for the Stella Prize, the same year. Lucashenko writes fiercely and is committed to her craft that is politically charged and echoes her cultural identity. In this book too, the author has astutely woven aspects of social justice, moral bankruptcy and cultural politics into the dramatic familial narrative. Lucashenko’s strong command of the literature is evident as she tackles every issue that she brings forth in the book with adequate emphasis, nuance, sensitivity, and depth. The language is a mix of English and Aboriginal Australian English, further cementing the fact that Melissa Lucashenko is an uncompromising author, celebrating her autonomy and heritage. 

This was my first foray into Indigenous literature, and it left me unsettled in the best way. It forced me to confront my own unconscious biases, especially the contradiction of embracing diversity while not actively seeking out Indigenous voices.

Across the world, Indigenous communities continue to face marginalisation, ostracism and erasure. In India, indigenous communities commonly referred to as Adivasis make up 8-9 percent of the population. From Central India to South India to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Indigenous communities are facing displacement under the pretext of development, such as infrastructure, tourism, mining, dams etc. The Great Nicobar Project is one such example that’s threatening an extremely vulnerable Indigenous population. Apart from displacement and loss of their ancestral lands, these communities also struggle for economic equity, cultural preservation,  and political representation. Can it truly be called development if it is built on dispossession and suffering? Why does progress so often rely on the exploitation of the most marginalised?

Too Much Lip is a much needed social critique of our crumbling values in an increasingly hypocritical and polarised world. This review barely scratches the surface of Lucashenko’s complex narrative exploring flawed human beings navigating intergenerational traumas and modern day psychosocial stressors. A difficult, uncomfortable, but absolutely essential read!

~ JUST A GAY BOY. 👏

First, They Erased Our Name

📍 Myanmar 🇲🇲 

The Rohingya people are an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group who predominantly follow Islam from Arakan State (now known as Rakhine State) of Myanmar (formerly Burma). They claim they are indigenous to western Myanmar with a heritage of over a millennium. The Myanmar government considers the Rohingya as British colonial and postcolonial migrants from Chittagong in Bangladesh. In addition, the government also does not recognise the term “Rohingya” (officially banned the word on 29th March, 2014) and labels them Bengali, a term wielded as a tool of erasure. Significant minorities of the Rohingya practice Hinduism and Christianity. They have been described by the UN as one of the world’s least wanted minorities and some of the world’s most persecuted people. They are denied freedom of movement as well as the right to receive a higher education. They have been denied Burmese citizenship under the 1982 nationality law, rendering them stateless in the land they consider home. 

This memoir by the Rohingya author, Habiburahman, charts his arduous journey from being stateless in his own country to becoming a refugee across borders. He was born in 1979, in the Arakan state, in Western Burma. In 1982, under the dictatorship of U Ne Win, the Rohingyas were officially de-recognised as one of the Burmese ethnic groups. With that, more than a million Rohingyas were erased from the nation’s legal existence in an instant; and their history, culture and identity were invalidated. Even uttering the word “Rohingya” became forbidden. 

The author describes growing up in the shadows of fear, exploitation, domination and relentless bullying. His parents taught him never to speak the word Rohingya for fear of violence from the authorities; Muslim was considered a marginally safer identity. He grew up knowing he was a criminal in the eyes of the state, someone whose very existence was a pretext for the military to bolster its authoritarianism and Buddhist ultranationalism. He describes how incredibly difficult it was for him to get an education because the schools and teachers belonged to the majoritarian community. Everyday life unfolded under surveillance and simple tasks were transformed into punishable acts.

Habiburahman recounts the constant racism he endured, how he was mocked and abused for his looks and skin tone thereby reflecting on the wider cruelty Rohingyas face simply for existing. All ancestral lands, including his family’s, were confiscated by the government and official documents were summarily dismissed. Children were barred from higher education. Crossing from one district to another required a maze of permissions, bribes and desperate pleading. Police detentions of both children and adults were routine, used as tools of extortion and intimidation. Those who could not pay remained imprisoned under brutal conditions for indefinite periods. 

Against these insurmountable odds, Habiburahman remained determined to study law. Fully aware that leaving home might mean never returning, he risked everything to reach Yangon in pursuit of education. The journey, fraught with danger at every turn, only reinforced the reality that he and his community were considered the most unwanted people on the planet. However, as despair and the threat of imprisonment closed in, he made the agonising decision to flee Myanmar. 

Becoming a refugee exposed him to new forms of danger in Thailand and Malaysia. Even with the help and recognition from the UN and UNHCR, he faced discrimination, rejection and statelessness in every country. Eventually, after encountering unimaginable obstacles, he managed to escape to Australia where dignity seemed momentarily within reach. Yet even there, citizenship remained elusive, his rights curtailed, and the label of a refugee clung to him. He realised, he would always be an outcast in the eyes of the world.

First, They Erased Our Name, coauthored by Sophie Ansel, translated from the French by Andrea Reece, is a searing and unflinching account of the brutality of the Rohingya genocide perpetrated by the Myanmar military junta. The world woke up to this act of ethnic cleansing only after an exodus of 600000 people landed at the Bangladesh border in August 2017. But as the book makes clear, the genocide has been decades in the making, enabled by state policies, discriminatory laws, and a hyper-nationalist propaganda that have incited massacres with impunity. The narrative also confronts Burmese politician, pro-democracy leader and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi’s reluctance and refusal, to address and challenge the genocide on global platforms. Instead, her silence, her deliberate omission to raise objection to this mass extermination, has rendered her complicit in this crime against humanity. 

Habiburahman now lives in Melbourne. He founded the Australian Burmese Rohingya Organisation (ABRO) to advocate for his people back in Myanmar and for his community. He is also a translator, social worker and the secretary of the Arakan Rohingya National Assembly (ARNA), based in the UK. In 2019, he was made a Refugee Ambassador in Australia. Sophie Ansel is a French journalist, author and director who lived in South Asia for several years. She met Habiburahman in 2006 and has been advocating for their cause since 2011. 

The Rohingya genocide remains an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe that has particularly intensified since 2017. It has led to mass killings, tens of thousands of genocidal rapes, destruction of villages and forced displacement of people and entire communities from Myanmar into neighbouring countries where they are forced to seek refuge. This crisis has created a fertile ground for human trafficking, where the perpetrators operate without accountability, while the victims die in obscurity or survive in the most inhumane conditions. The world has conveniently forgotten this calamity, just as it has forgotten the genocides and civil wars in East Turkestan, Tigray, Kurdistan and West Papua. According to the sources cited in the “Rohingya refugees in India” Wikipedia article, around 40,000 Rohingyas live in slums and detention camps across India, the majority of whom are undocumented. Under the Indian Law, they are considered illegal immigrants, and not refugees. They have been labelled as potential terrorists and are perceived as a national security threat leading to forced detentions and deportations. 

First, They Erased Our Name, is a devastating read because it captures humanity at its worst. It is filled with details that are almost unbelievable. However, its chronology of events and descriptions that convey an apartheid, offer an invaluable lesson. The author, through his story, has shown how the human experience depends upon the geography, religion and appearance of a person and how when these conditions are not met, ostracism, slavery, violence and humiliation become the cornerstones of the same human experience. It forces us to confront a truth we repeatedly fail to absorb; nobody dreams of becoming a refugee or willingly chooses statelessness.

At its heart, this memoir is a reminder of our collective failure, our inability to protect the most vulnerable and our willingness to look away from ongoing genocides. It compels us to remember Fannie Lou Hamer’s words, which echo through every page of this memoir, ‘Nobody’s free until everybody’s free’. Habiburahman’s story is a testament to that truth and an indictment of a world that has yet to learn it. 

~ JUST A GAY BOY. 😞

Fundamentally

📍 Iraq 🇮🇶 

Dr Nadia Amin, a British Pakistani professor of criminology living in London, gets asked by the UN to join their new agency UNDO in Baghdad, aimed at deradicalisation and rehabilitation of ISIS brides. At this juncture, Nadia’s personal life is in disarray. Her relationship with her mother is fractured and precarious following Nadia’s apostasy. What started as a friendship with Rosy evolved into a “situationship” only to devolve into an unrequited love from Nadia’s end. While she is caught in the midst of this frustration, emotional chaos, maternal abandonment and an existential ennui, she decides to undertake the Baghdad assignment, hoping that this humanitarian cause would bring her purpose and fulfilment.

Upon her arrival at the UN Headquarters in Baghdad, Nadia finds herself on unfamiliar terrain and often lacks crucial contextual knowledge. She is surrounded by her subordinates who question her capabilities and remain indifferent and unsupportive. Her boss, Lina, with her quirky avian obsessions, expects Nadia to demonstrate exceptional competence while Lina herself remains opaque and obtuse in her suggestions and instructions. All she is concerned with is UNDO outperforming other UN departments and proving to the international and Iraqi media that their rehabilitation program has been a successful endeavour. 

As Nadia immerses herself into the program and starts engaging with ISIS women, both Iraqi and European, she confronts the depth of their indoctrination. Many were radicalised at a young age by ISIS men peddling a violently distorted version of Islam. It is here that Nadia encounters Sara, a fierce and volatile British Pakistani woman with whom she forms an immediate bond. Sara’s journey from London to Iraq was undertaken willingly, only to later realise the magnitude of her betrayal. Her daughter by one of the ISIS men gets legally separated from her after the fall of ISIS and is sent to live with the man’s parents somewhere in Iraq. Nadia takes it upon herself to reunite Sara with her child without fully apprehending the dangers behind this mission, even if it means Nadia losing her coveted UN job and becoming an international fugitive. 

Nussaibah Younis crafts a gripping narrative that takes us on a journey from the bureaucracy of the UN, the geopolitics of Iraq to the mindless savagery of ISIS. She highlights the covert corruption, performative humanitarianism and rigid hierarchies present even in international humanitarian agencies. Sara’s character isn’t the most likeable but her personality rightfully reflects the psychological conditioning and the internalised misogyny, violence and terror justified in the name of religion. Her story is a chilling reminder of the consequences of voluntarily surrendering one’s agency to fanatics and fanaticism wherein the radicalised victim starts humanising, rationalising and normalising blatant violations and atrocities. 

Nadia is the quintessential star of the book whose nonchalant chutzpah, determination, compassion and resilience are contrasted with her low self-esteem, maladaptive coping, compulsiveness and impetuosity. She carries unprocessed trauma, refuses to accept uncomfortable truths about relationships, resorts to alcohol and casual sex to quell the internal dissonance, yet never relinquishes sincerity and integrity. Nadia’s curiosity and generosity draw her towards people and situations that exploit and manipulate her. This indirectly helps her gain emotional maturity and the author charts it with such sensitivity and subtlety, the proof of which gets revealed at the end of the book when Nadia is faced with an exceptional betrayal.

Another character who left a lasting impression is Farris. In his brief appearance, he embodies a kind, benevolent Muslim man respectful of women and humanity alike. Characters like Farris are vital; they reflect the real face of Islam, a religion that has been wronged by zealots and Islamophobes. 

Dr Nussaibah Younis, an Iraqi-Pakistani living in London, is a peacebuilding practitioner and a globally recognised expert on contemporary Iraq. Her writing is crisp, controversial and considerate. The unmissable humour, often dark, sometimes satirical is deftly woven into the book. Rather than resorting to stereotypes, she insists on nuance, even in the bleakest moments. The climax delivers a startling twist that injects an urgency and a muted sensationalism into the story. My sole reservation lies with the ending which felt a tad improbable and discordant with the otherwise uncompromising authenticity of Younis’s voice. I wonder if she was mollycoddling the readers of the actuality.

Fundamentally which was shortlisted for the 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction, is about fundamentalism and fundamentalists who hack your conscience to further their personal and political agendas. In today’s world, fundamentalists are no longer confined to terrorist organisations, they increasingly masquerade as saviours of religion, democracy and humanity. We are being governed by fundamentalists whose intentions are rooted in fascism and capitalism. These aren’t just politicians but ordinary citizens too who have been radicalised by majoritarian narratives that claim historical grievance while actively othering and annihilating minorities and vulnerable communities. Fundamentally, any extremism that thrives on fear-mongering and propaganda, is single-leader-centric, and demands unquestioning allegiance is a gateway to monarchy, totalitarianism and capitalist terrorism. 

~ JUST A GAY BOY. 🤨

Your Stick Will Not Break My Strength

If Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other functions as a bible on feminism and its intersectionality, then Sunil Mohan’s memoir is a meditation on masculinity, trans masculinity and their many intersections. Through his lived experiences, Sunil has dissected the concepts of masculinity and patriarchy and how in our societies, they become interchangeable, feeding into one another in deeply corrosive ways, and yet how societies and communities are built on a machinery that perpetuates their growth and favours the intermingling between them.

As a trans man, Sunil has brought to the fore the lived realities of being a trans individual in India whilst examining the same through the lens of societal prejudice and internalised conditioning. He has lamented on the absence of trans masculine narratives in public discourse and how even within the queer community and queer spaces, they remain invisible. Trans men continue to exist on the fringes of society despite their embrace of masculinity. Sunil also astutely questions if trans masculinity and cis masculinity have any commonality and whether masculinity itself can become intoxicating and addictive if one fails to interrogate the privileges it inadvertently bestows. 

Sunil shares his experiences of working in various NGOs throughout his career and how this has shaped his understanding of how these spaces operate. He candidly recounts instances where his unwavering demand for rights was labelled rebellious, within organisations meant to support him and his community. These experiences only strengthened his resolve to disrupt the hierarchies that plague NGOs working for the marginalised and often do more disservice than good due to the said hierarchy. He  simultaneously questions the cis heteronormative authority that governs trans upliftment spaces. Raahi, an organisation co-founded by Sunil, dedicated to the rights of marginalised genders and sexualities, was born out of such an angst and a necessity for people rehabilitating their own communities, one that is rooted in collective care rather than any of the institutionalised hierarchies.

Sunil Mohan has also confronted the oppressive nature of the Brahmanical system head on. He doesn’t shy away from enumerating the various ways in which this system has been synonymous with power and patriarchy. People get marginalised and deprived of their rights because of the casteist and capitalist ideas inherently embedded within this brahmanical system. Sunil’s emphatic voice through the book will be a reality check for all of us who belong to this system and continue to benefit from these structures without acknowledging the centuries of violence they have produced and continue to produce. Importantly, he urges readers to reflect on how one might detach from domination and meaningfully contribute to democratic, egalitarian futures.

Although Your Stick Will Not Break My Strength is a memoir, it defies the conventions of the genre. Sunil mentions his early days when he was a part of the Kerala Women’s cricket team, a time when the sport and its uniform offered temporary refuge from the alienation of his female-assigned body and the oppressive dominance of his father. He narrates his struggles with remarkable restraint, refusing to romanticise pain. He has used his decision to transition as a means to provide us with an invaluable insight into the mind of anyone who is thinking of transitioning. He also wonders about society’s fixation on penile bodies while keeping his transition in mind, and within the trans masculine community while also attempting to make everyone comprehend the infinite social and cultural supremacy and superiority that these penile bodies come to possess. 

Notably, Sunil chooses not to centre himself or his numerous achievements in his own memoir. Instead, he has used it as a platform to dismantle the potent patriarchal beliefs that promote casteism, queerphobia, transphobia and marginalisation. In fact, his nuanced exploration of hierarchies within the marginalised and the marginalisation within the marginalised is sensitive, intuitive and deeply intelligent. 

Your Stick Will Not Break My Strength is both an unflinching account of the perils plaguing the trans and trans masculine communities and a courageous introspection into their internal contradictions shaped by the dominion of patriarchy and the Brahmanical order. This book is a masterclass on humility, compassion, empathy, resilience and responsibility. Sunil has shown us how memoirs are to be written, how one can deconstruct the sociocultural mores and jingoistic politics through the power of one’s story. Finally, as a trans man, Sunil has written an autobiography (as narrated to Rumi Harish and Ekta) without making it a ‘trauma porn’ designed for the cis het gaze. He refuses victimhood and instead charts a path toward collective healing through friendship, community, silence, commitment, patience and perseverance. 

A must-read. Truly!

( Some quotes from the book: 

“When we construct “our” spaces, why do we again recreate the same patriarchy and masculinity? Did we struggle to get out of the toxic masculine patriarchy that controls and puts boundaries on non-cis female bodies, only to recreate and reconstruct the same?”

“I often felt disturbed and uncomfortable about another issue: single-leader-driven movements.”

“When we were discussing masculinity, we realised that another masculine trait is to have the power to “correct” others through force and violence, to control and regulate everyone. This kind of power also pulls sexual violence into its ambit and is premised on “showing someone their place”.”

“Sometimes, I have felt that feudalism, monarchy, fundamentalism, fascism, religious superiority, sexual actions and reproduction, marriage, morality, the supposed superiority of the self, caste, race, blood, lineage, and food are all different expressions of “masculinity”.” )

~ JUST A GAY BOY. 👏👏

A Guardian and a Thief

Some books are so bad that there can be no redemption for them. That’s precisely how Megha Majumdar’s A Guardian and a Thief appears to be. Since it came with great appreciation from none other than Oprah and was even her book club’s pick, also having been shortlisted for the National Book Awards, it made me wonder what exactly made this book a “shining jewel”, particularly in the eyes of an American readership. To put it bluntly, this book has been written by an NRI for a Western, specifically American, audience. It ticks every box when it comes to caricaturing and stereotyping Indians through a familiar western gaze. What is especially astonishing is that despite having lived in India for nineteen years, Majumdar still chooses to pander to this gaze by reproducing a shoddy and pathetic poverty porn. This raises a larger and more troubling question: what should be said about the literary genius of someone like Oprah when they champion a book like this which exemplifies lazy writing highlighting all the tropes, has a flimsy storyline and actively perpetuates stereotypes. Shouldn’t Oprah have known better? 

The story is set in a climate-stricken Kolkata of the future where poverty, famine and scarcity form the backdrop of an anarchic society. The billionaires continue to profit obscenely making billions out of the misery of the poor while hoarding resources. There’s the protagonist, Ma, who is desperate to migrate to America with her father and her two-year-old daughter, Mishti, to reunite with her husband. Battling the everyday challenges of extreme heat and hunger, she does secure the visas for their journey. However, fate has other plans when a thief steals her bag containing their passports, leaving Ma helpless and hopeless, just days before their scheduled flight.

What follows is so tedious, disjointed, and incoherent that one loses track of the entire story. Calamity after calamity befalls Ma, but her otherworldly, almost supernatural stoicism feels performative and implausible. The city of Kolkata experiencing the effects of the climate crisis that Megha has tried to depict, is reduced to cursory descriptions of poverty, emotional apathy and belligerence amongst its inhabitants without allowing for nuance, insight, or interpretation. It feels as though the author has simply taken the tropes of a ‘third world country’ and transplanted them into a speculative future, where little has changed, an exercise that caters neatly to a voyeuristic western imagination. 

More than being disappointed, I am angry. Ma is singularly the most frustrating character I have encountered in recent literature. Not merely one-dimensional, she is also burdened by an unnecessary, almost theatrical resilience and pretence. She seems to be the living embodiment of somebody who is deliberately delusional. Mishti, her daughter, emerges as one of the most irritating child characters I have ever read and I bemoan the author’s craft in making me dislike even a toddler. 

The book leaves me with a host of unanswered questions. What was the author trying to convey with the supposedly shocking climax? What traumas has Ma endured that explain her behaviour and why is there little to no mention of the same? Does the text hint at child abuse, and if so, why is it merely gestured at and abandoned? Why is the narrative energy spent building empathy for the thief while Ma, the ostensible victim, remains alienating and opaque? Lastly, why did Majumdar write this book at all? If the aim was only to appease an American audience, then it’s worked brilliantly. 

This brings me back to those who have praised the book, Oprah included. Where does the responsibility of the reader lie when a book such as this gets promoted as one of the “best books of the year”? For Oprah did this book tick the ‘diversity reads’ box and hence the appropriation of India and Indians by a diaspora author was never examined or interrogated? Should diaspora authors get away with such misrepresentation simply because they are Indian by origin, even though their work is divorced from the lived realities it claims to portray and their writing is nothing but a patronising paean? 

I have said this before and I will say it again, diaspora Indian authors should write about their diaspora clan. Everything else risks becoming appropriation. To imagine an India steeped in suffering and mythological misery, written for western consumption and for pacifying one’s misplaced patriotism, serves neither literature nor truth.

It genuinely pains me to criticise my forever idol, Oprah for choosing Megha Majumdar’s A Guardian and a Thief. Oprah will continue to remain my idol, but at times it’s imperative we question our idols too for their choices. If not, we become equally complicit. 

Postscript: I am aware that this review may be misconstrued as misogynistic and dismissed for mansplaining, because I, as a cis-presenting queer man is criticising two women, but I still stand by my review nonetheless. After all, this critical thinking is also inspired by Oprah and her penchant for speaking truth to power. 

~ JUST A GAY BOY. 🫣😠

Juveniles & Other Stories

📍 Thailand 🇹🇭 

Juveniles & Other Stories is an anthology of short stories centered on queer narratives and queer characters. While the pieces may appear to be coming-of-age stories at first glance, a deeper reading reveals a tapestry of complex human emotions, rendered with remarkable empathy and compassion.

Nearly half of the book comprises the titular novella “Juveniles”. This is a story about two young boys Hai Saeng and Dao Nhue and their journey through adolescence. Dao Nhue gets enamoured with the mysterious Hai Saeng, who comes from a wealthy and privileged background. Hai Saeng seems to visit Dao Nhue’s village only during the summers and is never seen with his parents. His brooding and detached personality arouses Dao Nhue’s curiosity, and as they begin spending time together, he realises the dark secrets hiding behind the facade of congeniality. The innocent friendship blossoms into love and both of them find themselves in an inseparable dynamic of longing. However, Hai Saeng’s past looms large preventing him from embracing happiness or accepting love. The simmering anger, frustration and a sense of abandonment pushes him toward self sabotage and makes him lash out at times. The story builds toward a pivotal moment when Hai Saeng is forced to confront his worst fear leading to untoward repercussions that irrevocably alter the trajectory of both boys’ lives. Though the story is told through two young adults, it deals with adult issues of violence, neglect and emotional repression and how unchecked wounds can harden into self contempt, unworthiness and indifference. Hai Saeng’s attempt to walk through life unperturbed whilst bottling up rage and resentment only transforms him into a vehicle of pain. Ultimately, the boys do navigate their emotional burdens in flawed, confused, and profoundly human ways, thus offering an understated but resonant life lesson.

Amongst the accompanying stories, the one that caught my attention was, “Hirun and Beardy”. Again, this is about two men and the unspoken love between them. The fact that neither of them address a misunderstanding that occurred years ago, allowing it to fester and create a rift, says a lot about how adults choose to act immature and give in to their ego and false assumptions. Eventually it takes their perceptive nephew to bridge the gap and remind them of the unmistakable bond that has always existed between them. 

Apinuch Petcharapiracht, the author, (also known under the pen name ‘Moonscape’) is a Chinese-Thai writer based in Phetchaburi, Thailand, and who dreams of marrying her girlfriend. Her stories in the book repeatedly explore unrequited love, silent longing and suppressed desire. Themes of grief, loss and loneliness echo throughout the collection. Through Juveniles & Other Stories, which has been translated from Thai by Kornhirun Nikornsaen, Apinuch has demonstrated how queer individuals experience the same vast spectrum of human emotions like anybody else. Sometimes the simplest stories leave the deepest impressions and Apinuch’s collection is a testament to that truth.

~ JUST A GAY BOY. 🏳️‍🌈🌈

The Girls Who Grew Big

Leila Mottley’s second outing has grown bigger in terms of its stature, calibre, characterisation and language. Her first book, Nightcrawling, confronted racism, police brutality, vulnerability and poverty; The Girls Who Grew Big tackles the uncomfortable realities of teenage pregnancy and the familial and societal ostracism that accompany it, all set against the backdrop of eroding reproductive rights and restricted abortion access in contemporary America.

Set in the beach town of Padua, in the Florida panhandle, the story is about a group of young teenage girls banding together as they face rejection, ridicule and discrimination for being pregnant. Calling themselves ‘The Girls’, they find a sense of community, safety and emotional security through this sisterhood. Among them, the author principally focuses on three protagonists: Simone, Emory and Adela. 

Simone, the eldest at twenty, is raising her twins, Luck and Lion. Their father is a wayward, irresponsible guy called Tooth with whom she tries to maintain civility for the sake of her children, despite the disgust she feels for him. When she discovers she’s pregnant again, her desperate attempts to find a safe abortion lays bare the grim realities of reproductive inequity in America today. 

Emory, a white girl disowned by her family for getting pregnant with a Black guy, finds solace with the Girls. She comes to live with her grandparents who aren’t the most welcoming of her or her situation. The constant rebuke, revulsion and mistreatment that she experiences at her grandparents’ home makes her determined to complete her education despite the odds. After she gives birth to Kai, her vulnerability coupled with maternal guilt makes her reconsider her earlier choice and instead she decides on marrying the father of her child when he proposes to her, though she is now in love with another girl. The emotional chaos paves the way to a penultimate moment that is singularly powerful and unconventionally self-affirming that forms the emotional heart of her narrative. 

Adela, who comes from a privileged background, is sent away from Indianapolis to Padua by her conservative, devout parents to stay with her grandmother Noni, so that her pregnancy, which they consider an abomination, can continue in secrecy and after the delivery, she can come back to them sans the child and go back to living her original life of becoming the best swimmer in the country. After she meets Simone and Emory, her priorities start to shift and she starts enjoying their camaraderie. However, impulsive decisions and a string of reckless behaviours soon upend her life and her friendship with Simone and Emory, so much so that the three girls are forced to arrive at the thresholds of an emotional precipice that will reshape and realign their lives forever. 

Simone, Emory and Adela represent the section of the society who are always shunned into oblivion for an occurrence that involved an equal contribution from a man. Their stories are a telling of the unprovoked patriarchy, chauvinism and misogyny that comes disguised as morality. Their standing in the face of social adversity that demands obscurity of them, which often gets labelled as resilience and courage, is in fact a mirror of the helplessness and humiliation bestowed upon them by the society at large. Simone nurtures her children and the other girls in spite of her dire financial and living circumstances, to build this sisterhood, which she knows is going to protect them all. Emory’s radical decision, which can be perceived as selfish and antithetical to motherhood, is essentially a defiant act of self compassion that speaks of her need to self actualise her reality, rather than be consumed by its consequences, hence reframing motherhood through the lens of autonomy. Adela’s necessity to build a falsified image of herself to gain affection is symbolic of the various ways in which patriarchy operates. She does reclaim her dignity through self acceptance, refuses to self flagellate, despite the retribution and continues to take accountability for her actions without letting them define her. 

The Girls Who Grew Big, as a book, is an intricate, intimate portrait of pregnant teenage girls that doesn’t resort to sensationalism or melodrama. There is a quiet fortitude in its pages that gets revealed slowly and steadily. It’s a scathing commentary on the circumstantial evolution of motherhood from romanticism to ostracism, invisibility to hypervisibility, pride to shame. Leila Mottley has proven once again that she is a master storyteller and a gifted writer, and one who can navigate the most complex human emotions and experiences with the needed attention and affirmation. If Nightcrawling demanded a brutal urgency, then this book requires and delivers, patience and tenderness, empathy and nuance. Mottley,  through her ingenious writing, has kept sisterhood as the overarching theme, and hasn’t reduced it to a trope or made it synonymous with toxic positivity. Instead, she has shown sisterhood to be a living, shifting force, that can empower, protect and ultimately redeem.

As the girls grow, physically, emotionally and spiritually, so too does Mottley, cementing The Girls Who Grew Big as a work of remarkable maturity and depth. 

~ JUST A GAY BOY. 😇

Off-White

📍 Suriname 🇸🇷 

Bee Vanta is sick and she knows she’s dying. She is the matriarch of her large estranged family and has been disappointed with everyone’s life choices. She, a white Dutch woman married a Black man, Anton, who served in the military. Winston, the apple of her eye, abandons her and goes off to the Netherlands, and establishes a life there with his partner Lya, never to return. Louise, her daughter, has four children, Heli, Imker, Babs and Audi, from different men, and has difficulty in sustaining relationships with men because of the cycles of exploitation and abuse. Laura, her other daughter, suffers a psychological collapse after her partner’s deception and now resides in an asylum. Rogier, her last son, is a doctor in the Netherlands, who left Bee and Suriname for a better life. Bee suffers the biggest setback when her favourite granddaughter, Heli, also decides to go to the Netherlands to pursue her dreams. Imker takes it upon herself to care for her grandmother and decides to live with Bee and tends to her with utmost love and affection, cooking for her, cleaning the house and even bathing her. As Bee navigates her distraught relationships both in memory and in person, she struggles to accept the crumbling dynamics of her family, the love which seems distant and unattainable, and she questions everything that has led her to this day, her decisions and mistakes including a secret, a dark and ruthless chapter of her life, that has cost her equanimity and composure leading to a permanent fissure within her heart. 

Off-White is a story that is embroiled in the familial interpersonal relationships and unresolved conflicts, differences and heartaches. The various mother-daughter relationships which form the greater part of the narrative are shrouded in lethargic love, abysmal animosity and a conspicuous callousness. These women seem to carry the intergenerational traumas and a sense of repentance unbeknownst to them, struggling to understand its history, that has cast a spell on their present and that which is also threatening to ruin their future. 

Bee hasn’t come to terms with Louise’s choices in life and doesn’t think highly about her. According to Bee, Louise’s inability to have a husband has been her downfall and hence the necessity for her promiscuity. Bee has also internalised Laura’s shame for being unstable and depressed. Louise tries to maintain a stoic facade when internally she remains fragile and fundamentally distracted. Her repeated attempts to seek companionship, despite countless betrayals, can seem as a call of defiance in the times of hopelessness, but simultaneously it also portrays her adamancy in embracing solitude. Heli, though charted her own escape from the confines and traps of an overbearing and dysfunctional family, is unable to resist the melancholy that it has brought in its wake. She is also juggling a strangely toxic relationship with a married man, who is in Suriname while indulging in passionate encounters with another man in the Netherlands. This dichotomy and dishonesty claims her spirit and consciousness as she meanders through one questionable choice after another. Imker, seems to have intentionally decided to clean up the emotional mess of her family. Whilst caring for Bee, she chooses to distance herself from a maternal illusion and a sisterly loss. As she focuses on her two other siblings, she tries to objectively analyse the desolation that Louise and Heli have left in her life. Her relationship with a Muslim man, Umar, gives her perspective, possibility and permission to have wants and needs and somewhere during this journey she starts to find her personality.

Off-White is one of those demanding works of literature that has been written deliberately to unsettle you. It is controversial, convoluted and courageous. It hides the blasphemy in the whispers of secrecy and inconvenience. It is inconsistent, indelibly unconventional yet remains as a potent offering of love, compassion and forgiveness. The book explores dysfunctional relationships and dissects its origins and decay. The narrative sensitively captures the sexual exploration, experience and exploitation of the various women characters. The sexuality is boldly infinite, the sexual violence squeamish and shocking. The book also delves into the politics of colourism and racism and how skin colour can influence kinship and familial ties. The title of the book, Off-White, is in fact rather symbolic and almost feels like a scathing critique on the racial inadequacies of the society at large. 

The characters in the book provoke you as a reader, compel you to submit to their chosen adversities, to accept their misfortunes and mindless perversity. At the same time, they exhibit catharsis through their flaws and friction. The daughters and granddaughters of Bee seem to be acting as a receptacle of her maternal malevolence and benevolence, as Bee continues to self-flagellate for her prejudices and pride. This trickles down through the progeny as her children and grandchildren inherit the same tendencies and continue to lead lives that can only be described as off-colour. 

Astrid Roemer, is a Surinamese Dutch writer and teacher, and the first Caribbean author to win the P.C. Hooft Award (a Dutch-language literary lifetime achievement award) in 2016. In 2021, she received the Prijs der Nederlandse Letteren (the most prestigious literary award in the Dutch speaking world, awarded every three years) becoming the first Surinamese winner. Her book, On A Woman’s Madness, first published in Dutch in 1982, was translated into English and published in February 2023. In September 2023, it was longlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature, and in 2025 was longlisted for the International Booker Prize. Off-White, was first published in Dutch in 2019, and its English translation was published in 2024. The translators, Lucy Scott and David McKay, have done a prodigious job in translating this monumental work of Roemer. 

Astrid Roemer is a tour de force in the world of literature. Her writing is problematic, poignant and purposeful. She writes to explore the endless possibilities of living and existing. Suriname is the soul of Off-White as she takes us on a geographical journey from Paramaribo to Nieuw Nickerie. The story is Surinamese in its entirety and Roemer hasn’t made any concessions or given any explanations for people who aren’t Surinamese or familiar with the country. The colonial history of Suriname is the silent subtext that courses through every page in the book. The language is piercing and punishing in equal measure. Roemer’s Off-White is an affirmation of the fact that a book can be a masterclass in storytelling and a masterpiece of literature while retaining its integrity and authenticity. 

If Han Kang illuminated the fragility of the human condition, Astrid Roemer exposes its fractures with equal brilliance. Having said that, I think I have a new favourite. 

~ JUST A GAY BOY. 👏👏