Red Emma’s

In 2019, Sandeep, a twenty-seven-year-old from a Punjabi family, killed five relatives and himself after a date was set for his wedding. His suicide note described feeling trapped by social expectations and condemned to a life he had not chosen. Harjant Gill recognized something unsettling in his story. Gill grew up in Punjab as the eldest grandson of a Sikh patriarch before immigrating to California as a teenager. Although he built an openly gay life in Washington, DC, he returned to the closet for safety while researching in India, even as his grandfather sought a “suitable” bride for him. Gill could refuse marriage and return to America, but many men he met had no easy exit. What happens when patriarchy promises men power while denying them the freedom to choose who they will become?

Coming of Age in Macholand explores how young men respond to patriarchy—submitting, rebelling, escaping, and sometimes coming undone. Drawing on four years of research, conducted over a decade, Gill enters the worlds of Punjabi boys learning to become men, where masculinity is shaped through violence yet sustained by emotional bonds. Amid political upheaval, a faltering agrarian economy, and migration hollowing out Punjab’s villages, the book portrays men struggling for power while losing intimacy and control over their lives. Blending memoir, ethnography, and social investigation, Gill exposes a system that brutalizes women and queer people while constricting the men it claims to serve. At a moment when men feel angry, lonely, and adrift, the book asks what they must relinquish—and reclaim—to become truly free.

Harjant Gill is an anthropologist, filmmaker, and writer whose work explores masculinity, migration, sexuality, and the intimate effects of patriarchy in South Asia and its diasporas. He is the director of several award-winning documentaries which have been broadcast on the BBC, PBS, and Doordarshan (Indian National TV). Gill’s work has been funded by the Fulbright Program, the Whiting Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Point Foundation, the Institute for Citizens and Scholars, and the American Institute of Indian Studies. Born in Chandigarh (India) and raised in Northern California, he now lives in Washington, DC, and teaches anthropology at Towson University.

Manil Suri is the author of three internationally acclaimed novels including The Death of Vishnu, and a book on popular mathematics, The Big Bang of Numbers. His work has been translated into 27 languages and received several honors, including winning the Barnes and Noble Discover Prize, and being longlisted for the Booker Prize. His latest book is the 2026 memoir, A Room in Bombay.