“We are told to love ourselves first, but self-love and radicalisation can be violent when women of color have to love themselves, despite themselves”
Sharan Dhaliwal discusses the impacts of colonization, white supremacy and patriarchy on women of color, through the lens of her perspective as a Queer British Indian woman. She talks about how the colonization of India brought on this wish for many to be as close to whiteness as possible and they would use creams to do so. It recalled a memory of mine-I grew up in a white household in white dominated towns, so I never really saw myself in others. It wasn’t until my freshmen year of High School that I met another Indian (I’m mixed, my mom is white). We were in the restroom and she off-handedly mentioned that if I were to go to a certain part of India, I’d be popular because of my being light-skinned. I didn’t understand that, and in reading this section of the book it clicked and made me recall that part of my life.
She also talks about how she viewed her body and how that came from the lens of her future marriage, that need to fit what people deemed desirable, specifically what men viewed as desirable.
Beauty is unattainable for everyone, because it’s based on a man’s desire, a figment of his imagination.
In terms of Queerness, she talks about how there is an idea that homosexuality is western but in reality, we know that it wasn’t until India was colonized that it became illegal.
The Hijra people are queer, trans, and/or intersex people who are recognizes as a third gender. They have featured in the Kamasutra, as well as ancient Hindu texts such as the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. The idea of a third gender has existed for longer than we can imagine in many cultures and having only two binary genders in fact a modern creation.
They don’t deny that there was probably homophobia, but that I was the colonization of India that caused it to become illegal, and she does expand a bit into some of the harmful things that happened because of it. She discusses many things throughout the book. Important and vital and powerful. I highly recommend this book and to also please read more books that discuss these issues by people of color.
If you have recommendations of other books that discuss similar topics, please give them and I hope to see you in the next post.
Books I Eat 