In Our Own Words: Documenting the Queer Everyday in Central Asia

In Our Own Words: Documenting the Queer Everyday in Central Asia is a collective work that is at once research, art, and activism. Rooted in decolonial queer and trans* theories, it emerges from lived realities and centres the voices of queer and trans* Central Asians.

Bringing together fifteen contributors, this book offers works in three languages, rooted in the diverse contexts of Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. Their chapters explore activist lives marked by resistance, solidarity, and burnout; family relationships; coming out and coming of age; intersections of queerness with ethnicity, nationality, migration, and religion; and trans* and gender-diverse experiences across the region.

Through multilingual, border-crossing perspectives, these narratives foreground everyday life and embodied experience, offering alternative ways of knowing. While written primarily for queer and trans* people in Central Asia, we hope it resonates with readers beyond the region and across disciplinary boundaries.