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Homeless

Book Reading by Vaishali
Vaishali
Literature | Book Talk

After discovering she’s lesbian and dyslexic at 20, Vaishali begins to untangle her anxieties around reading and writing while she develops new anxieties from being closeted and living in a country that criminalized homosexuality at the time.

In 2015, at 22, she comes out to her mother which makes her leave her parent’s house in Bombay. She moves to Ahmedabad where she suffers a break-up and struggles with unemployment. When she can't make rent, she is happy to join a Master's program at a public university in Hyderabad, where she can live rent-free in the hostel.

In Hyderabad, in the dingy, insect-ridden hostel room with a door that doesn’t quite close, she tries to make the best of the situation by writing a book about her experiences. But instead, she keeps writing about her past: discovering dyslexia, homosexuality, and the clitoris; falling in love and recovering from a harrowing breakup, academic failure, loneliness, and homophobia; living with sickness, anxiety, depression, and her caste, gender, and body. Her poignant and compelling writing explores her and her people’s relationship with her truth.


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