So, what is it, really? What is stone pleasure, in less than a dense academic essay about queer history and more than a punchy conservative reduction that must be contained in a single sentence to fit in a dictionary as invented as any other reassuring false barometer for truth? Well, it’s this- they meet me at my lacking. They take the scenic rout to my satisfaction. It isn’t simple, and it doesn’t make sense. We engage in sexual dialectic, offhandedly on a Tuesday. Every Tuesday. Every Sunday too. It isn’t an orgasm, and yes it actually is. I am satisfied and left longing. Fill me, I say, and I mean with absolution. Penetrate me, I beg, and I mean in the way that brine penetrates meat and the word penetrates the spirit. Touch me, I think, privately in a corner of my own awareness, and they hear it despite the silence, and in the way that even I didn’t understand. I’m not aware of the absences until they bring them to me, when skin meets leather meets skin. I cum inside them and when they roll onto their back to show me, they are miraculously empty and unequivocally full.

book review

lana del rey for interview magazine (march 2023)

the last time I reblogged this post right before I got a great job, in a permanent work-from-home position, with benefits, retirement, and a salary literally 3x what I was making before, doing something I really like. 

So you know. 

I. autobiography

Samra Habib, We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir

Kamala Das, My Story

Suniti Namjoshi, Goja: An Autobiographical Myth

Minal Hajratwala, Leaving India: My Family’s Journey from Five Villages to Five Continents

Nishta J. Mehra, Brown White Black: An American Family at the Intersection of Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Religion

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Dirty River: A Queer Femme of Color Dreaming Her Way Home

II. fiction

Suniti Namjoshi, Feminist Fables

Suniti Namjoshi, The Conversations of Cow

SJ Sindu, Marriage of a Thousand Lies

Amruta Patil, Kari

Shamim Sarif, The World Unseen

Parvati Sharma, The Dead Camel and Others Stories of Love

Dolar Vasani, Not Yet Uhuru

Mala Kumar, The Paths of Marriage

Shani Mootoo, Out On Main Street

Shani Mootoo, Cereus Blooms at Night 

Shani Mootoo, Polar Vortex

Farazana Doctor, Stealing Nasreen

Out! Stories from the New Queer India, ed. Minal Hajratwala

IIb. fiction - dubious depiction of lesbian relationships by non-lesbians (there are more of course, and you can read about some of them in Same-Sex love in India: Readings from Literature and History, eds. Vanita and Kidwai)

Ismat Chughtai, “The Quilt”

Ismat Chughtai, The Crooked Line 

Manju Kapur, A Married Woman

Jhumpa Lahiri, The Lowland

Nayana Currimbhoy, Miss Timmins’ School for Girls

Tanwi Nandini Islam, Bright Lines: A Novel

Abha Dawesar, Babyji

III. poetry

Anurima Banerji

Suniti Namjoshi

Kamala Das

Kaushalya Bannerji

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Samira Obeid

Nila Gupta

Minal Hajratwala

Kosar Saira

Ruth Vanita

V.K. Aruna

Ghazala Anwar

Inez Dullas

Neema Vachani

Mita Radhakrishnan

Maya Chowdhry

IV. non-fiction and mixed anthologies

Naisargi Dave, Queer Activism in India: A Story in the Anthropology of Ethics 

Ruth Vanita, Love’s Rite: Same-Sex Marriage in India and the West

Frances B. Singh, Scandal and Survival in Nineteenth-Century Scotland: The Life of Jane Cumming

Maya Sharma, Loving Women: Being Lesbian in Unprivileged India

Giti Thadani, Sakhiyani: Lesbian Desire in Ancient and Modern India

Because I Have A Voice: Queer Politics in India, eds. Arvind Narrain and Gautam Bhan

No Outlaws in the Gender Galaxy, eds. Chayanika Shah, Raj Merchant, Shals Mahajan, Smriti Nevatia

Sex and the Supreme Court: How the Law is Upholding the Dignity of the Indian Citizen, ed. Saurabh Kirpal

Suparna Bhaskaran, Made in India: Decolonializations, Queer Sexualities, Trans/National Projects

Women’s Sexualities and Masculinities in a Globalizing Asia, eds. Saskia E. Wieringa, Evelyn Blackwood and Abha Bhaiya

Facing the Mirror: Lesbian Writing from India, ed. Ashwini Sukthankar

Shraddha Chatterjee, Queer Politics in India: Towards Sexual Subaltern Subjects

Same-Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History, eds. Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidawi

Queering India: Same-Sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and Society, ed. Ruth Vanita

Gayatri Gopinath, Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures 

A Lotus of Another Color, ed. Rakesh Ratti

The Very Inside: An Anthology of Writings by Asian & Pacific Islander Lesbian and Bisexual Women, ed. Sharon Lim-Hing

Urvashi Vaid, Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation

Urvashi Vaid, Irresistible Revolution: Confronting Race, Class and the Assumptions of LGBT Politics

Sara Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life

Monisha Das Gupta, Unruly Immigrants Rights, Activism, and Transnational South Asian Politics in the United States

Ami Ramesh Patel, “A Community History of Satrang: Negotiating Visibility as LGBTQ South Asian Americans in Los Angeles"

Sharon Fernandez, “More than Just an Arts Festival: Communities, Resistance, and the Story of Desh Pardesh” 

*lesbian is used both as an adjective and noun in this list. works are included that deal with lesbian relationships. 

**south asian lesbian cinema for south asian lesbian films and documentaries (the original post is updated whenever more are found)