Hijab Butch Blues: A Memoir

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I do realize that I’m somewhat playing into these binaries and strict categorizations by applying such a specific scope to this list, but I hope this will be seen as a useful starting place for memoirs on butch and/or masc identity and not restrictive. Definitely shout out any books you’d like to recommend in the comments, even if they don’t necessarily explicitly touch on butch identity! I’ve included some recent releases as well as some slightly more under-the-radar titles that skew academic or hybrid in form. I’d love to hear more suggestions! Lamya remembers examples of this, like when early on this couple “bemoaned the ‘homosexual agenda’” – as well as how they have grown in their allyship since then, making queer friends and confronting their prejudices. After Lamya comes out to him, Rashid asks Lamya to hold him accountable if this happens. So while Hijab Butch Blues left me with no shortage of questions of my own, it also was a comforting read. Butch and transmasc identities are obviously separate, but I have known a lot of folks for whom they bleed together or folks who have moved between them at different points of life. This memoir speaks to that experience, following the author’s journey as a butch lesbian into starting testosterone and coming out as trans at the age of 40. Ty Bo Yule used to own the former dyke bar Pi in Minneapolis (which unfortunately is one of the many lesbian spaces that no longer exists). Time and again, Lamya challenges readers to reject longstanding, culturally-informed binary ways of thinking. She writes about the uniquely heart-breaking homophobia of Muslims, who are also a minority in the West"

Hijab Butch Blues: A Memoir by Lamya H, Hardcover | Barnes Hijab Butch Blues: A Memoir by Lamya H, Hardcover | Barnes

Lamya, who is gender nonconforming, also writes of how the “rigidity of gender” follows them “like a punishment everywhere, across oceans and continents”. The author writes about feeling patronised by a friend who says Lamya would “make a beautiful trans man”.As an immigrant from a “rich Arab country,” Lamya H was often asked by acquaintances in the American LGBTQ+ community how she could possibly remain a practicing Muslim, given Islam’s reputation for oppressing women and queer people. Hijab Butch Blues, Lamya’s memoir, is a generous, probing and candid response to that query. She reimagines Prophetic tales in contemporary, colloquial language, and interweaves lessons she extracts from the Quran with her daily life experiences. After moving to the United States for university, Lamya recalls “deciphering the hierarchies of this country” – from white supremacy to Arab and Muslim names alone rousing suspicion. Lamya writes that their “brown hijabi Muslim body is seen as scary, disempowered, both hypervisible and invisible at the same time”. AND IF ALLAH's (SWT) GENDER HAS NOT BEEN SPECIFIED ANYWHERE IN THE QURAN NOR THE HADITH.....THEN HE IS NON-BINARY, Y'ALL 🙌🏻🎉🥳!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hijab Butch Blues — Lamya H

Searing . . . a bold story of taking hold of one’s life and building something completely unique.” — BuzzFeedHAZRAT MARYAM (RA) DID NOT WANT ANY MEN TO TOUCH HER, SO THAT MUST TRULY MEAN...SHE'S A LESBIAN 🙀🙌🏻🎉🥳!!!! MASHALLAH, SISTER, YOU'RE AMAZING, KEEPING THE QUEER COMMUNITY ALIVEEEE 🤩

Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H | Waterstones

Hijab Butch Blues is not your typical coming-out tale that climaxes in a grand revelation to family members. “What would my telling them I’m queer achieve?” asks Lamya in one chapter. When we speak, she brings up people's fixation on revealing queerness to parents. “There are so many things that straight people don’t tell their parents growing up, there’s an entire part of so many peoples’ lives that their parents just don’t know about – and so it feels really strange to be obsessed with this idea of having to tell them everything,” she explains.The memoir swings, pendulum-like, between her own story and her reflections on the stories at the heart of Islam, stories that shape her understanding of what it means (or can mean) to be female and Muslim. This pairing of personal and theological truths is powerful and respectful of both individual and cultural identity.

Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H: 9780593448762

This memoir was well-written, engrossing, and introduced me to a community and life path that was, in some ways, new to me. Lamya H is an immigrant, a hijabi, and a non-binary lesbian. I am always fascinated when people who are not cis-het pledge allegiance to religious groups that tell them that they are worse than worthless, that they are a walking abomination, and I truly try to understand what leads people to do this. I want to be clear that there is no conflict between belief in god and being LGBTQ+, and that there are many denominations that embrace people who are not cis-het and do not preach that the bible considers them monsters. However, I have had LGBTQ+ friends and acquaintances over the years who are adherent Orthodox Jews, Eastern Orthodox and Evangelical Christians and I do not get that. (I discussed this with a group of colleagues last night and was angrily told that the Eastern Orthodox church is not anti-LGBTQ+ so I looked it up this morning. The Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of the United States, declares, “Like adultery and fornication, homosexual acts are condemned by Scripture.”) But this is the same community, the same family, that Lamya notes would preside over funeral prayers and who they stand side-by-side with during long Ramadan prayers. The very concept of a Queer Muslim is considered to be an oxymoron by more conservative and puritanical Muslims, who believe rigidly that queerness and religiosity cannot overlap. “It’s completely outside the realm of their imagination that people can be both gay and Muslim,” writes Lamya in her book.Lamya starts Quran study readings with a Queer Muslim group and discovers that Muslims can pray side-by-side instead of the traditional male in front of the female hierarchy. She “nerds out” about a new tafsir of the Quran, and becomes closer to her friend Manal as the two read, interpret and discuss the surahs together. She ultimately finds a community of like-minded Muslim Americans when she attends a “coming out Muslim play”, a gathering that she writes “feels like a window into Jannah”. While Lamya refers to the chapters of the book as essays, the chapters flow seamlessly together and are laden with thoughtful metaphors – sometimes, quite abstract. It's one thing to write about a Muslim struggling with their sexuality, BUT IT'S A WHOLE OTHER THING TO COMPLETELY MISUNDERSTAND QURANIC VERSES AND DECIDE ALLAH'S (SWT) GENDER YOURSELF??????? No one, not even the prophets, questioned Allah's (swt) gender, SO WHY ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH SHOULD YOU??????!!!!!! When fourteen-year-old Lamya H realizes she has a crush on her teacher--her female teacher--she covers up her attraction, an attraction she can't yet name, by playing up her roles as overachiever and class clown. Born in South Asia, she moved to the Middle East at a young age and has spent years feeling out of place, like her own desires and dreams don't matter, and it's easier to hide in plain sight. To disappear. But one day in Quran class, she reads a passage about Maryam that changes everything: when Maryam learned that she was pregnant, she insisted no man had touched her. Could Maryam, uninterested in men, be . . . like Lamya?