Your Stick Will Not Break My Strength

Sunil Mohan’s complex and moving memoir is more than just a story of transition. It’s a story that describes a deeply felt yearning, a certainty of knowledge about who you wish to be, and constant, fundamental and self-reflective questioning about what it means to be born into one body and inhabit an identity that is defined by a different body and a different set of ascribed and acceptable behaviour. As he makes the transition from ‘female’ to ‘male’, Sunil asks why he cannot choose to define his gender in his own way, why being ‘man’ should mean adopting a given, socially acceptable model of masculinity. ‘I was always uncomfortable,’ he says, ‘with “masculinity” even when I deeply felt I was a “man”…. I was hesitant to identify with something I had critiqued so fundamentally.’ Honest, open, self-questioning and filled with courage and compassion, Sunil Mohan chooses to move away from the traditional and often linear trajectory of a life narrative. Instead, he turns the lens on the queer, trans, anti-caste, feminist and people’s movements of which he has long been a part. In doing so, he resolutely refuses to identify as a victim and thinks through and reflects on the politics of resistance, marking the learning that comes from friendships forged in struggle and commonality of identity, reflecting on the meanings of silence and offering thoughts on strategies for healing and reconciliation.