“Coming of Age in Macholand is a poignant ode to the possibility of another way to live and love, beyond the violence and cruelty of patriarchal authority. Gill writes with courage and conviction, weaving a gripping personal story together with keenly observed social and political history. The narrative is sometimes harrowing, often charming, and deeply moving, living out the ethos of vulnerability and tenderness that it recommends.”

Anand Pandian, author of Ayya's Accounts and Something Between Us

“With verve, intimacy, and insight, Gill takes us on a tour of ‘macholand’, a globalized Punjabi landscape of arranged marriages, patriarchal family, and caste-bound kinship. Written from the vantage of those who can’t or won’t perform scripted manhood properly, this book invites us to rethink closeness and kinship and to remake social worlds.”

Roger Lancaster, author of The Struggle to Be Gay—in Mexico, for Example and Life in Hard

“Part memoir, part social inquiry, and part love letter to a place and people, Coming of Age in Macholand is a brave reckoning with patriarchy and the making of masculinity. Gill invites us into the intimate spaces where gender, family, migration, and faith intersect, illuminating the burdens we inherit and the futures we can choose. Read this book to imagine liberated ways of being with one another, grounded in love above all.”

Valarie Kaur, bestselling author of See No Stranger

“Blending autoethnography and feminist and queer inquiry, Gill navigates the complex terrain of Indian patriarchy with rigor, insight, and empathy. This powerful book asks what it means to survive and come of age—for both the ethnographer and their subjects—amid migrations, separations, social fracture, and the shifting realities of life in postcolonial, neoliberal India.”

Inderpal Grewal, emeritus, Yale University

“In this bold, provocative, and eloquently written book, Gill skillfully combines personal history with extensive ethnographic research to map the sprawling, pernicious reach of patriarchy. Coming of Age in Macholand provides a compelling—and often harrowing—look at the cultural, societal and sexual attitudes that govern life in present-day (Indian) Punjab.”

Manil Suri, author of The Death of Vishnu and A Room in Bombay

"Anecdotal storytelling meets incisive analysis. By writing about male machismo, still an almost forbidden subject in Panjab, Harjant Gill creates a space for empathy, understanding, and reflection. This is a book that must be read, and even more, reflected upon.”

Amandeep Sandhu, author of PANJAB: Journeys Through Fault Lines

“Coming of Age in Macholand is both an analytically precise and intimately wrought account of contemporary economic and psychic transformations of patriarchal domination in Indian Punjab and in its diasporas. Through deft interweaving of extensive multi-sited ethnography, feminist and social theory, Sikh history and philosophy, and personal memoir, Gill charts traumatic challenges for Sikhs across gender, caste, and class in surviving the punishing familial and societal norms he terms Macholand.”

Lawrence Cohen, author of No Aging in India

“Coming of Age in Macholand is a powerful, intimate, and deeply moving account of Punjabi masculinity, caste, kinship, migration, and queer life. Moving between ethnography and memoir, Gill reveals how patriarchy both privileges and wounds men while exacting devastating costs from women and queer communities. This book is a major contribution to the study of masculinities in South Asia and its diasporas and to the field of Sikh and Punjab studies.”  

Arvind-Pal S. Mandair, author of Religion and the Specter of the West

“If you’re performing someone else’s script rather than living your own life, don’t miss this book. Eloquently, clearly, Gill examines the historical and economic causes of the conditional love of parents trapped in a straitjacket of patriarchy. He describes Indian and American Sikh men hemmed in by family imperatives to marry, migrate, and raise children within caste and kinship networks. There’s hope, for Gill and his interviewees are survivors of Macholand who carved out livable options. You’ll come away strengthened to follow Sikh teachings that refuse harmful customs based on blind obedience in favor of those based on compassion.”

Shauna Singh Baldwin, author of What the Body Remembers

"This is autoethnography at its most eloquent, its most significant, its most essential. Gill’s deeply felt analysis of the violence and sorrow of patriarchy helps us to envision an anthropology of freedom.”

Ruth Behar, author of The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart