This book documents and analyzes the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic through queer and feminist perspectives. A testament of dispossessions as well as a celebration of various forms of resilience, community building and critical responses, it chronicles the social history of queer and trans persons and women in South Asia and the diasporas. Through a creative and collaborative form of ethnographic writing, the book enters in conversation with the worlds of domestic helps, caregivers, cultural workers, students, sex workers and other precariously employed people. It examines the confining effects of the pandemic on the lived realities of many queer and trans individuals, the caste-oppressed and women across socio-economic backgrounds. The chapters in the volume piece together narratives of prejudice, hardship, self-expression and resistance from interviews, personal accounts, as well as poems and stories from activists, artists and other collaborators. The book pays particular attention to issues of power and asymmetrical relationships amidst COVID-19 and offers critiques to deepen the understanding of the uneven fault lines within which historically oppressed persons reside in South Asia. Exploring themes of migration, disability and sexual politics, this book is an essential reading for scholars and researchers of gender and sexuality studies, cultural studies, South Asian studies, sociology and social anthropology.

Liveable Lives examines what makes life liveable for LGBTQ+ people beyond equality reforms. It refuses the colonizing narrative of surviving in a ‘regressive’ Global South and thriving in a ‘progressive’ Global North. By linking the concept of liveability with the decolonial literature on sexualities, this open access book draws on individual's stories, art and writing to examine how lives become liveable across India and the UK, providing a multifaceted investigation of two divergent contexts where activists refuse local framings of exclusion/inclusion and LGBTQ+ lives are continually re-envisioned. Embracing diverse methodologies, including workshops, in-depth interviews, street theatres, and web surveys, the book stands as an example of a queer collaborative praxis that refuses the familiar Global North / Global South practices of theorizing and data gathering. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on www.bloomsburycollections.com.

Friendship as Social Justice Activism brings together academics and activists to have essential conversations about friendship, love, and desire as kinetics for social justice movements. The contributors featured here come from across the globe and are all involved in diverse movements, including LGBTQ rights, intimate-partner violence, addiction recovery, housing, migrant, labor, and environmental activism. Each essay narrates how living and organizing within friendship circles offers new ways of dreaming and struggling for social justice. Recent scholarship in different disciplinary fields as well as activist literature have brought attention to the political possibilities within friendship. The essays, memoirs, poems, and artwork in Friendship as Social Justice Activism address these political possibilities within the context of gender, sexuality, and economic justice movements.

Liveable Lives examines what makes life liveable for LGBTQ+ people beyond equality reforms. It refuses the colonizing narrative of surviving in a ‘regressive’ Global South and thriving in a ‘progressive’ Global North. By linking the concept of liveability with the decolonial literature on sexualities, this open access book draws on individual's stories, art and writing to examine how lives become liveable across India and the UK, providing a multifaceted investigation of two divergent contexts where activists refuse local framings of exclusion/inclusion and LGBTQ+ lives are continually re-envisioned. Embracing diverse methodologies, including workshops, in-depth interviews, street theatres, and web surveys, the book stands as an example of a queer collaborative praxis that refuses the familiar Global North / Global South practices of theorizing and data gathering. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on www.bloomsburycollections.com.

Drawing on the incredible wealth of diversity of languages, cultures and movements in which lesbian feminisms have been articulated, this book confronts the historic devaluation of lesbian-feminist politics within Anglo-American discourse and ignites a transnational and transgenerational discussion regarding the relevance of lesbian feminisms in today's world, a discussion that challenges the view of lesbian feminism as static and essentialist. Through careful consideration of contemporary debates, these writers, theorists, academics and activists consider the wider place of lesbian feminisms within queer theory, post-colonial feminism, and the movement for LGBT rights. It considers how lesbian feminisms can contribute to discussions on intersectionality, engage with trans activism and the need for trans-inclusion, to ultimately show how lesbian feminisms can offer a transformative approach to today's sexual and gender politics.