Product Description

Using a combination of multi-sited ethnography, textual analysis, historical documentation analysis and memoir writing, Parmesh Shahani provides macro and micro perspectives on what it means to be a gay man living in Bombay. He explores what being gay means to members of 'Gay Bombay' and how they negotiate locality and globalization, their sense of identity as well as a feeling of community within its online/offline world. On a broader level, he critically examines the formulation and reconfiguration of contemporary Indian gayness in the light of its emergent cultural, media and political alliances. Some of the key features of this volume include: - an exciting path breaking ethnography, which combines a large macro sweep with an intensely personal narrative. The author's memories flow in and out of the main narrative to create a distinct reading experience. - a unique and timely look at urban contemporary Indian sexuality - an integrated approach that illuminates how new media technologies, the media industry, audiences, and broader socio-historical contexts shape gay identity in contemporary urban India - a different perspective on globalization in post-liberalization urban India, as India re-positions itself as a global superpower. How are its minorities being treated? How are they asserting themselves in this new imagination of the nation-state? - weaving in of personal experience that helps us understand male same-sex desire in relation to quotidian experiences in a city like Bombay.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #644284 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 360 pages

Review
Shahani`s Gay Bombay traces the modern and the old with charming first person. This book takes you to the television studios, the editing rooms, the dance floors, the chat rooms and the private parlours to discover gay Bombay in all its subtle victories, intimate vibrancy and surprising diversity' --Wendell Rodricks

Review
"Shahani's Gay Bombay traces the modern and the old with charming first person. This book takes you to the television studios, the editing rooms, the dance floors, the chat rooms and the private parlours to discover gay Bombay in all its subtle victories, intimate vibrancy and surprising diversity." - Wendell Rodricks.

"Parmesh Shahani is an original. …This book will inspire and provoke many interested in understanding the intersections between sexuality, globalization, and new media." - Henry Jenkins, Author of Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide.

"Gay Bombay is a must-read! Shifting seamlessly through the personal, the Gay Bombay community, the national and the transnational, the book gives the reader unique understanding into what is means to be gay and Indian." - Jyoti Puri, Director, Graduate Program in Gender/Cultural Studies, Simmons College.

"Gay Bombay is a path-breaking study of homosexuality in modern Bombay/Mumbai that will be essential reading for students of gender and sexuality." - Rachel Dwyer, Professor of Indian Cultures and Cinema, University of London