Homo and Juliet by Shruti Chakravarty

Homo and Juliet narrates eight love stories of lesbian couples and non-binary persons. In these stories, we read about unrequited love, a sense of lost time, unfolding gender journeys, mental health care, chosen families, femme invisibility, finding community, asexual partnerships, trans-lesbian love, butch-femme dynamics, desi family acceptance, runaway couples, celebration of queer anniversaries, surviving heartbreaks, and activism. The book captures the confusion and conviction of first love and how it propels the queer lover into a queer life. Simultaneously, the dialectics of queer intimacies, especially because of an interaction between the deeply personal and the oppressive social, unfold in each story. On the way, crucial differences from the normative emerge in how meanings are made of intimate feelings, how they are expressed in queer ways and how they are navigated in a heterosexual world. A powerful commentary on love itself, Homo and Juliet throws light on how we can reimagine all kinships through queer love, and how, in queer love stories, we can locate freedom and joy for all people.