In the Intersection: South Asian LGBT Lit

After digging around for hours for South Asian lit that wasn’t primarily Indian, we finally have managed to get together 30 books for you, of which only about half are Indian (perhaps unsurprisingly those are the easiest to find, comparatively). Once again, there’s a mixture of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, so we hope you’ll find something to enjoy here.

As before, we’re using flags to mark a country of origin (where possible) and a separate emoji (🏹) to mark if the author is a diaspora author.

And once again, briefly, some links to the series so far: Black, African & Caribbean lit, East Asian lit, West Asian lit, Southeast Asian lit, Latine lit, Indigenous lit, religion in lit, and neurodiversity & disability in lit.

And if you want more links, there are (so many) more lists here, here, here, here, here, and here. There’s also this zine by a Sri Lankan & an Afghan-Pakistani creator.

Swimming in the Monsoon Sea by Shyam Selvadurai (gay mc) 🇱🇰 🏹
The Henna Wars by Adiba Jaigirdar (lesbian mc, bi li) 🇧🇩 🏹
Cobalt Blue by Sachin Kundalkar, trans. by Jerry Pinto (gay mc) 🇮🇳
My Magical Palace by Kunal Mukherjee (gay mc) 🇮🇳
Cereus Blooms at Night by Shani Mootoo (lesbian mc, nonbinary characters) 🇹🇹 🏹

Marriage of a Thousand Lies by S. J. Sindu (gay mc) 🇱🇰 🏹
A Life Apart by Neel Mukherjee (gay mc) 🇮🇳
Falling into Place by Sheryn Munir (bi mc, lesbian mc) 🇮🇳
Afterlove by Tanya Byrne (lesbian mc) 🇬🇾 🏹
The Quilt & Other Stories by Ismat Chughtai, trans. by Tahira Naqvi & Syeda S. Hameed (lesbian mc) 🇮🇳

The Carpet Weaver by Nemat Sadat (gay mc) 🇦🇫
The Baburnama: Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor by Zahirud-din Muhammad Babur, trans. by Wheeler M. Thackston (memoirs) 🇮🇳 🇵🇰 🇦🇫 (🇺🇿)
With Respect to Sex by Gayatri Reddy (nonfiction) 🇮🇳
A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif (achillean mc) 🇵🇰
Moving Truth(s) ed. by Aparajeeta Duttchoudhury & Rukie Hartman (essays) 🇮🇳 🇵🇰

The Wish Maker by Ali Sethi (gay mc) 🇵🇰
Pride Climbing Higher ed. by Chad Frisbie (essays) 🇳🇵
The Truth About Me: A Hijra Life Story by A. Revathi, Translated by V. Geetha (memoir) 🇮🇳
Trying to Grow by Firdaus Kanga (gay mc) 🇮🇳
High Noon and the Body by Kyla Pasha (poetry) 🇵🇰

Bright Lines by Tanwi Nandini Islam (sapphic mc) 🇧🇩 🏹
The World That Belongs to Us ed. by Aditi Angiras & Akhil Katyal (poetry) 🇧🇩 🇳🇵 🇵🇰 🇱🇰 🇮🇳
If They Come for Us by Fatimah Asghar (poetry) 🇵🇰
The Subtweet by Vivek Shraya (trans mc, nonbinary character) 🇮🇳 🏹
Bodymap by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (poetry) 🇱🇰 🏹

Me Hijra, Me Laxmi by Laxminarayan Tripathi, trans. by P. G. Joshi & R. Raj Rao (memoir) 🇮🇳
The Stars Change by Mary Anne Mohanraj (nonbinary characters, polyamory) 🇱🇰
Between Queens and the Cities by Niranjan Kunwar (gay mc) 🇳🇵
The Cowherd’s Son by Rajiv Mohabir (poetry) 🇬🇾 🏹
Myrmecophile by Ifti Nasim (poetry) 🇵🇰 🏹