Moving Truth(s): Queer and Transgender Desi Writings on Family - Paperback

by Rukie Hartman (Author), Aparajeeta 'sasha' Duttchoudhury (Author)

Moving Truth(s)" is written to move us all. Closer to home. To bring conversations about gender and sexuality home to family and community. To serve ourselves and our families and communities in better understanding the lives of queer and transgender individuals by sharing our stories - our truths - and together move toward a place of inquiry and respect, such that "truth" itself is moved to a new place. How do we stay engaged with family, community and culture when we experience homophobia and transphobia? Where have we found support systems? Who have been our most active and sometimes least expected advocates? What do we need to do to help grow the kind of community we seek support from? These questions move us toward a new sense of truth, shifting us out of the false belief that being queer and/or transgender is necessarily at odds with family and community. Our stories help us move those ideas into a new light.The rich, celebratory, and self-reflective personal narratives in this book offer something different in their overlapping approaches to discomfort, fear, silence, as well as forgiveness, patience and an active pursuit of a more loving way to navigate relationships with ourselves and with others. As a community-building project, this anthology was created from a heart-centered place involving not only collective editing and story-development, but also providing contributors room to expand, heal and connect with one another across boundaries of experience.

Author Biography

Aparajeeta "Sasha" Duttchoudhury is a South Asian writer from Seattle who graduated from the University of Washington with a BA in English. This project has been a part of Sasha's South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) Young Leaders Institute fellowship. Rukie Hartman was brought to this anthology by her enthusiasm for queer activism in a new way. Being able to create community across the diaspora and facilitate the writing and sharing of stories has been a fun adventure. She graduated from the University of Washington in 2013, and writes about issues relating to transracial adoption on her personal blog, No Lotion 4 These Legs. Both Sasha and Rukie have previously contributed to another book project, T.I.P.S. to Study Abroad: Simple Letters for Complex Engagement, a collection of letters written alongside their study-abroad classmates who traveled to Bangalore, India.