MANBOOBS

A visual artist’s debut memoir about growing up gay and finding artistic refuge from the “patriarchal penitentiary” of Pakistan.

Born in Abu Dhabi, Aijazuddin spent most of his childhood and adolescence in Lahore, the city to which his parents returned when he was 5. As deep as his family’s Pakistani roots were, the author felt like a perennial outsider. The effeminacy he displayed as a child later manifested as queerness and—to his dismay—a pair of “manboobs” that made the overweight adolescent Aijazuddin look “more like the statue of a pagan fertility goddess than a pubescent boy.” Yet even as he struggled with his sexuality and body, the author managed to find other gay youths who shared his love of everything glittery and gorgeous, from Cleopatra to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. During his post-college life in New York City, a painter friend was granted a green card on the strength of his early career achievements, and Aijazuddin, also studying in New York, began laying the foundation for a similar attempt. Realizing that his dream of residing in America could take years, the author returned to Pakistan to become a working artist. The social pressures to conform to heteronormativity surrounded him, especially as he found artistic recognition and, later, a boyfriend whom he eventually lost to schizophrenia. Despite his struggles with personal tragedy and disenchantment with the U.S., the author found strength among other gay Pakistani transplants, all while taking solace in the great lesson every musical he had ever seen taught him: although “no life is without struggle, no life need be without joy.” Unabashed in its depiction of camp and queer identity, Aijazuddin’s book is a poignant reflection on identity, race, and the meaning of home.

A wickedly funny and often moving memoir.