BOOK: Foot-Prints of a Queer History

Maya Sharma: Foot Prints of a Queer History. Yoda Press (2022).

I first started working with Maya in late 2019 after arranging to come and to an internship with Vikalp Women's Group. Remotely, I would read through and edit stories that she had collected throughout the years. In early 2020, we worked full time to turn the many stories she had collected into a book. I also contributed a chapter on Maitri Karar.


''Footprints of a Queer History is a simple narrative of queer stories marked by personal journeys, political consciousness, socio-legal struggles, friendships, and love; it puts on record, within the larger historical backdrop, our humdrum and unexceptional acts of everyday-living that are pierced with the pain of stigma and silence.
Stories capture the voices of the marginalized, the rarely heard, and only stories can truly and fully capture their day-to-day reality. They transcend the limitations of defining human experiences and show the impossibility of telling the whole truth, arousing the imagination for that un-tellable tale and leaving room for the inarticulate to attempt those spillages of reality that can only be sensed.
As you turn the pages in this book, you can hear the untold and the unstated in the stories-both unique and universal, you may find footprints that echo some parts of your journey in everydayness of our human lives.''