How Print Magazines Upheld Queer South Asian Culture
Finding love is hard enough, but in the '80s and '90s, it was even more difficult when so much community-making was done in print.
When Dr. Anil Mohin was looking for a partner, he put out an ad in Frontiers, a free, biweekly publication for queer Southern California communities. While he didn't get any love matches, a member of Satrang — a Southern California-based community organization that has been supporting South Asian LGBTQ communities since its inception in 1997 — reached out to him instead, inviting him to the organization's next potluck. It was there that he met his partner of over 30 years. Mohin's is just one of the many stories that was featured in the "Archival Intimacies: Queering South/East Asian Diasporas" exhibition at ONE Archives.
For decades, before the dawn of the Internet, print publications, like Trikone Magazine, Bombay Dost and Shakti Khabar, told stories by and for queer South Asians in the '80s and '90s. And, they were fearless.
Trikone Magazine, which was birthed from the eponymous Bay Area organization and their corresponding newsletter, had covers plastered with watercolor-esque pictures of same sex couples sharing intimate moments as well as bold, block-letter headlines like "Being Muslim and Gay." Shakti Khabar hailed from a lesbian collective in the '90s and got its name from the female divine energy in Hinduism, Shakti. The name calls upon notions of power and force. Bombay Dost was India's first LGBTQ magazine.
Trikone Magazine, Bombay Dost, Shakti Khabar as well as countless other publications and newsletters included culturally relevant resources, recipes, drawings, creative writing and articles on everything that straight media didn't cover, from immigration to queer rights. These magazines were then swapped, passing through multiple hands in the hopes of reaching a wider LGBTQ audience.
These weren't just reading material; they were documentations of South Asian queer culture.
"I think any kind of publication made for an ethnic community becomes a part of it," Lexi Johnson, the co-curator for the exhibition, told KCET. "Publications offer an affirmation that your representation and your identity exist and there are other people that are like you. The very fact that there's a magazine published that's targeted at your specific, international identity is in and of itself powerful and impactful."
"Archival Intimacies: Queering South/East Asian Diasporas" explored South and East Asian queer diasporas and put their histories in conversation with each other to tell stories of their identity, culture and belonging. The exhibit also presented materials from the ONE Archives and Satrang.
See a few of the Trikone Magazine covers featured in the exhibit below. Click right and left.
Many publications put out ads for parties and potlucks. Some even included readers' call-outs for partners, friends, lovers or beards. Then, towards the backs of the magazines, there were sections for classified ads, so that subscribers could find each other.
[Queer South Asian publications] gave the community visibility representation in a safe way, without being outed in the process," Aziz Sohail, the other co-curator, said. "It was about finding the kind of landscape or the geography of queer South Asian-ness and understanding then who your people are and building a network of togetherness."
In many cases, the print medium didn't just help queer South Asians find their community locally, but nationally and internationally with each publication's international circulation.
"These newsletters and the little organizations that developed in different cities and localities were really about trying to find ways of connecting and then finding ways in which we might share something together or what kind of community [queer South Asians] could forge together to find some sense of solidarity or even familiarity." Nayan Shah, a professor of American Studies and Ethnicity and History at the University of Southern California who provided his own copies of Bombay Dost and Shakti Khabar to the exhibition, told KCET.
Many of the print publications emerged in the diaspora, as there were people of South Asian descent around the world. Many weren't born in the South Asian continent and were at a point of discovery in their lives — they wanted to figure out their perspectives as people who were coming to terms with their sexuality and gender identity.
"I think so many people were just trying to figure out how [queer South Asians] connected, so people often drew on different ideas about reinterpreting Bollywood music or ancient Indian sculpture or ghazal poetry to speak to queer sensibilities and eroticism that was really present for a long time," Shah said.
Shah himself met people through the communities that many of these newsletters and publications created. People would leave their phone numbers and emails, inviting others to meet up with them.
"I would learn about events or parties or conferences that would happen and then connect with people," Shah said. "I remember visiting India and actually being able to connect with some people that I wouldn't have possibly been able to connect with outside of the network that emerged through the mail."
Sohail said that for queer communities, storytelling can often involve trying to piece together a history. "It's about showing that we always existed, we were always here." While the need for a history or archive has been interrogated, Sohail reflects on the impact that the exhibition has had on queer South Asians.
For example, Nisha Ganatra, the director and screenwriter of the independent cult classic "Chutney Popcorn" — which was featured in the exhibition itself — visited the archive.
"She was overwhelmed because she had felt like queer South Asians never had a history, but we were able to give one with the exhibition," Sohail said. "It's interesting because even the people who made the archives didn't know that they were an archive themselves. I think there's beautiful ways to think about storytelling, visibility, archiving and building a community that is visible at the same time."
The community building that surfaced through these print publications truly took a labor of love. And while most of these print publications don't exist anymore — due to various reasons like lack of funding and the increased presence of the Internet — the love that they fostered lingers.
In fact, it's here to stay.
