Loving Women: Being Lesbian in Unprivileged India

The volume is a welcome addition on the Lesbim Writing shelf. For the first time here are unexpected poignant stories of working class women loving women. The stories here effectively challenge the notion that same sex love between women is a Western or upper caste phenomenon or that working class women are always vctimized sexual receptacles. Here are women with full sexual lives and a sense of their own sexual agency. -Maya Ganesh TarshiLoving Women tells the real-life stories of women from villages and small towns as well as from the poor sections of cities. Some of them know and own the word 'lesbian'. Some of them choose a viariation of the word 'saheli' (friend) to descrie a close relationship that may also be sexual. One adopts the identites and pronouns of a man to more closely resemble a heterosexual relationship. Maya Sharma's book allows each story to come through in all its complexity in a collection that illuminates the scope of female kinship and the role of class in lesbian relationships. -Urvashi Bahuguna. Scroll.in'Groundbreaking' is an over-used epithet but in the. case of this journey through lesbian working-class India it is entirely warranted. -Vanessa Baird New Internationalist