Ten queer South Asian reads for LGBT+ History Month 2025

Gopinath’s study of the aesthetic practices of queer diasporas spans South Asian, Middle Eastern, and African visual artists, offering an unruly gaze on regional curatorial practices and archives as a critical intervention in the field. Films, paintings, photography, and poetry come together in an exploration of visual practices that propose new mappings of space and sexuality, offering an alternative framework for understanding South Asian diasporic cultural and creative practices.

Luther and Ung Loh’s edited volume is a comprehensive attempt to theorise queerness beyond a Western framework. With case studies from South and East Asia, as well as the diasporas, the book offers a pan-Asian perspective on queer identities and movements, bringing them into a productive dialogue with one another. By reimagining the limitations of queer area studies, the authors challenge scholarly discourse, offering multiple decolonial analytical perspectives. The volume draws from three years of Queer Asia conferences held in London, making it a significant contribution to the field.

This Lambda Literary Award-winning book is a poignant autobiography of Habib, whose family left Pakistan as Ahmadi Muslims to escape persecution. As Habib explores her sexuality and grapples with a sense of abandonment by her faith, she recounts her journey towards self-acceptance. As a first-generation immigrant, she also reflects on her experiences of growing up in Canada – learning a new language and navigating coping mechanisms within the whiteness of her new environment. Eventually leaving home and discovering an inclusive Islam where she felt safe, Habib’s story is one of resilience.

Khubchandani’s latest book is truly one of a kind. Elegant and playful, they take the reader on a journey through Bangalore and Chicago, encountering desi (a term used to describe people and cultures of South Asia and their diaspora) drag queens, queer activists, and party revellers. While exploring the often-transformative possibilities of gay nightlife spaces, the author also critiques the hierarchies of race, caste, and religion that determine one’s access and exclusion. A significant contribution to queer labour and urban studies.

This part memoir, part guide is filled with anecdotes, interviews, and essays that celebrate Dhaliwal’s identity as a queer Indian woman in a racialised Britain. She recounts harrowing experiences of racism, self-loathing, and the difficulties of growing up in an Asian family within a predominantly white community. It is a book that many South Asian diasporic individuals can relate to. Dhaliwal also turns her critique inwards, examining her own privilege and identity. The visual style of storytelling is provocative, creative, and deeply cathartic.

Hossain has conducted extensive ethnographic research among hijras in Bangladesh for decades. The book offers a nuanced picture of the lives of sexual and gender minorities, exploring representation, desire, and religion. What does it mean to “make” a hijra subject? Hossain argues that hijra identity is an achieved status rather than an ascribed one. Chapters examine kinship-making, rituals, and intimate practices, offering rich insights into these communities. Crucially, the book challenges the India-centric lens often used to interpret hijra identities, providing a fresh perspective on gender and sexuality in South Asia.

Kasmani’s elegantly written book is a rich ethnography of Sufi fakirs in Pakistan. Employing concepts such as intimacy, longing, and queer religiosity, Kasmani rightly notes that queer is not solely a figure of sexuality. They explore the intersection of queer and religious studies, questioning what it means to queer religiosity – thus problematising and expanding queerness beyond rights-based frameworks. The saintly object of affection offers alternative sites of worldmaking and new possibilities.

Arondekar requires little introduction to scholars of queer studies. From her first book, For the Record to Abundance, she employs painstaking archival research to move beyond narratives of loss and failure, as well as the notion of “speaking for” marginalised communities. Through a study of the Gomantak Maratha Samaj, a devadasi collective –  Arondekar critiques the narrow focus of sexuality studies on defining ‘queer’. Instead, she conceptualises sexuality as an ongoing practice of abundance, honouring real lived experiences and offering a new way of reading histories of sexuality.

In this book, Banerjea and Browne explore what makes life liveable for LGBT+ people. Challenging the assumption that the Global North is inherently progressive, they critique the idea that policy change automatically leads to social justice. Through a creative participatory framework, they reimagine survival and liveability. The book also serves as an excellent example of ethical queer methodology, both in data collection and in theorising queer lives.

Dutta’s book shifts the focus of Indian queer studies away from urban-centric gay men, offering a new theoretical and ethnographic framework to study non-elite and non-metropolitan communities of kothis and hijras in Eastern India. They rightly critique the hierarchies within activist politics, which often exclude these communities from transnational queer movements, thereby reinforcing class and caste divisions. By introducing vernacularisation as an analytical framework, Dutta challenges the dominant influence of transnational queer activism, particularly its alignment with global capitalism.