Description
This is the first book to examine the same-sex weddings and same-sex couple suicides reported in India over the last two decades. Ruth Vanita examines these cases in the context of a wide variety of same-sex unions, from Fourteenth-century narratives about co-wives who miraculously produce a child together, to Nineteenth-century depictions of ritualized unions between women, to marriages between gay men and lesbians arranged over the internet.
Examining the changing legal, literary, religious and social Indian and Euro-American traditions within which same-sex unions are embedded, she brings a fresh perspective to the gay marriage debate, suggesting that same-sex marriage dwells not at the margins but at the heart of culture. Love’s Rites by Ruth Vanita is a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award.
ISBN 978-1349532087
Raised and educated in India, Ruth Vanita divides her time between Gurgaon and Missoula. Her first novel, Memory of Light, appeared from Penguin in 2020. Her next book of poems, A Hidden Player, will appear from Copper Coin in 2022. She taught at Delhi University for 20 years; for 13 years, she was active in the women’s movement and worked as co-editor of India’s first nationwide feminist magazine, Manushi, of which she was a founder. She is the author of many books on same-sex sexuality in Indian and British literature; her next book, The Dharma of Justice in the Sanskrit Epics: Debates on Gender, Varna and Species, will appear from Oxford University Press in 2022.
