Hijab Butch Blues: A Memoir

Product Information

I admire Lamya’s courage when they come out to their Muslim doctor – an “aunty doctor”, in Lamya’s words. Through its 10 chapters, the memoir generally follows the arc of Lamya’s life, beginning when she was a young girl in an international Islamic school, discovering her attraction to women and sometimes feeling suicidal.

Hijab Butch Blues | SpringerLink Lamya H.: Hijab Butch Blues | SpringerLink

However, in this memoir, the author shows us how their faith in Islam and queer identity are an inseparable part of who they are. Your narrative structure makes me think about both geographical displacement and the displacement of desire – themes present in many religious texts, by way of spiritual and bodily transition.Lamya H: There’s a freedom that displacement offers, in the sense that it allows you to invent yourself anew. No one, not even the prophets, questioned Allah's (swt) gender, SO WHY ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH SHOULD YOU? I felt like I could be queer in the ways that I wanted to, and if things didn’t work out, I could move. Lesbians and queer women, unless they’re commodified within a pornographic framework, are desexualised too. 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.

Hijab Butch Blues - Springer Lamya H.: Hijab Butch Blues - Springer

These are the stories that make the headlines, though, and given the statistics about LGBTQIA+ people considering or dying by suicide – LGBTQIA+ young people in particular, I wouldn’t be surprised if those statistics are a vast underestimate.This searingly intimate memoir in essays, spanning Lamya’s childhood to her arrival in the United States for college through early-adult life in New York City, tells a universal story of courage, trust, and love, celebrating what it means to be a seeker and an architect of one’s own life.

HIJAB BUTCH BLUES | Kirkus Reviews HIJAB BUTCH BLUES | Kirkus Reviews

That’s a huge responsibility, because you’re figuring yourself out outside of a context that people have defined for you previously. Every chapter surprised and moved me by the unexpected ways in which the Quranic story was connected to the author's. S. to justify her sins and make herself feel better and she is disrespecting her religion and everything is stands for. In her hotly anticipated memoir, the author traces the challenges and triumphs of her upbringing in New Jersey and the work (including a stint as an intern with Sen.She moved to New York City at 17 to attend university, feeling unsure of her sexuality and of America’s gay culture. They describe feeling invisible, but also being “this scary, disgusting creature” to white people and light-skinned Arabs. Where is the Muslim community’s curiosity in challenging long-held attitudes of prejudice based on difference? If this description makes you think that Hijab Butch Blues will speak to you in remarkable ways, you're right.

Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H: 9780593448762

With that said, this memoir stands out for me as one I know I'll be thinking about for a long time to come. This book is a total and absolute shattered portrayal of Islam, if you are non-muslim, then know that this book should not even be on Goodreads. More than that – in that mirror, I could see my queer Muslim friends beside me, the homophobia in Muslim spaces and the Islamophobia and racism in queer spaces.I don’t know exactly how the story of Maryam is framed in the text, but I wanted to add one detail that may provide another layer of significance to the story and its inclusion in the memoir.