Coming of Age in Macholand

Through Punjabi men’s struggles to marry, migrate, love, and escape, Coming of Age in Macholand reveals what patriarchy costs the men it promises to empower.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 S. 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 research spanning 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, this 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, this book asks what they must relinquish—and reclaim—to become truly free.