Description
About the Author
Maya Sharma is the author of two pathbreaking books Loving Women: Being Lesbian in Unprivileged India (Yoda Press, 2006) and Footprints of a Queer History: Life-Stories from Gujarat (Yoda Press, 2022). She is one of the few people who work with and documents the lives of queer people outside the metropolises and non-literate communities.
t’s a daunting thing to present a synopsis of decades of fieldwork, still, to summarise her work, Sharma says, “It was based on my personal journey of seeking out a community and finding validation in the society at large.”
“I had ended my marital life when I began working on my first book. Living in changed circumstances, I now saw how privileged my position had been. Though considerably reduced from my earlier status, I was still better off as a middleclass woman,” she adds, sharing that the loss of such privileges brought home a profound realisation of the lack of resources and power, which working-class and oppressed-caste women are faced with every day. “This understanding and the fact that we as a community longed to see ‘others like me’ bonded us profoundly,” she says. This was perhaps the path that paved the way for listening and writing stories in the safe space of friendships and relationships. [Source: Money Control, SAURABH SHARMA, NOVEMBER 05, 2022]
