This book explores the growing up experiences of gay and lesbian individuals within their homes, schools, neighbourhoods, among friends; and their journeys of finding themselves and their communities while living in a heterosexually constructed society. It is based on an exploratory, qualitative study with young gay and lesbian persons in two cities of Maharashtra, India and employs a life course perspective. The author has written this book from two primary loci: those of a mental health professional and activist, and a queer feminist activist. Through layered narratives and psychosocial analyses of experiences that are simultaneously attentive to subjectivities and to social and interpersonal processes, the author provides insights into the lives of children who grow up feeling ‘different’ from their siblings, peers and friends, and receive constant messages about correct ways of being and expression from their parents, teachers, friends and counsellors/doctors; the unique challenges to growing up as gay or lesbian, alongside complex processes involved in the decision of ‘coming out’; and the experience of meeting others like oneself, forming intimate, romantic relationships, bonds of friendship, political solidarity, families of choice and so on. In this book, the author employs a critical stance towards mainstream life span development studies, developmental psychology, child development and childhood studies that make universal assumptions of heteronormativity and gender binarism. This book is of interest to a wide readership, from psychologists, mental health and human rights scholars, to scholars of youth and childhood studies, gender studies, cultural studies, social work, sociology and anthropology.
Ketki Ranade, PhD., is currently Assistant Professor at the Center for Health and Mental Health, School of Social Work, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. Ketki has worked for over a decade as a mental health service provider, trainer, researcher and activist and has developed mental health service programs in low income urban settlements and institutions in Pune, Maharashtra. Ketki has conducted research and published in areas such as medicalisation of homosexuality, gay affirmative counselling, familial responses to gay and lesbian family members, sexual rights of persons with psychosocial disability. Their areas of teaching include mental health policy, legislations and advocacy, clinical social work, interdisciplinary perspectives in mental health and qualitative research methodology. They have been a research fellow under the Health and Population Innovations Fellowship Programme (2006-09), Population Council, India. They were a member of the Expert Committee on Transgender Issues formed by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Government of India in 2013. Ketki is also member of LABIA, a queer feminist LBT collective in Bombay. Ketki uses the gender pronoun 'they'.
