Hijab Butch Blues: A Memoir

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Look, if you want to write a book about your experiences as an LGBTQIA Muslim, go ahead. But newsflash; it is possible to talk about your experiences WITHOUT blatantly disrespecting a whole religion, y'know.

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

Such was the case with some of Lamya’s own friends, like one who she calls Rashid. When she finally reveals her truth to him, he responds: “Listen. I’m prone to saying ignorant things about queerness sometimes. Please don’t let it slide. Please tell me if I ever do that. Please hold me accountable." A revelation . . . with precision, compassion, and deeply observed storytelling, Lamya H navigates the fault lines of life and love in a queer Muslim body.” —Linda Villarosa, author of Under the Skin As I was reading, I thought about the novel — one of my favorite novels of all time — the title of the memoir is derived from, Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg. About a third of the way through the novel, Feinberg’s narrator Jess says, “How could I give up? Surrender was unimaginably more dangerous than struggling for survival.” It’s a line I’ve kept close to me since I read Stone Butch Blues for the first time as a teenager because it’s a reminder of what is at stake for those of us who imagine that better world I mentioned earlier and fight against all odds to try to build it. At the end of the memoir, Lamya writes,

By turns joyful and harrowing . . . profoundly generous and full of perfectly observed moments.” —Xtra Magazine 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. Maryam is not a prophet; Maryam is the Arabic name referring to the Virgin Mary, and Isa is Arabic for Jesus. Maryam would not have been sent to a mosque since this predated Islam. More importantly, though, Islamic tradition draws from a shared narrative history among the Abrahamic faiths, and Maryam is one of a select few figures from those traditions who has their own dedicated surah/chapter in the Quran. The Quran grants a great deal of importance to Mary, and in my experience this translates to a great deal of respect for Mary among Muslims. In many ways, reading Hijab Butch Blues felt like looking in a mirror. It wasn’t an exact reflection by any means, but I could recognise so many of the experiences recounted in this captivating memoir. From that moment on, Lamya makes sense of her struggles and triumphs by comparing her experiences with some of the most famous stories in the Quran. She juxtaposes her coming out with Musa liberating his people from the pharoah; asks if Allah, who is neither male nor female, might instead be nonbinary; and, drawing on the faith and hope Nuh needed to construct his ark, begins to build a life of her own—ultimately finding that the answer to her lifelong quest for community and belonging lies in owning her identity as a queer, devout Muslim immigrant.

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

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.Wonderful. I wish Hijab Butch Blues could be on every school curriculum, everywhere.” —Harriet Kline, author of This Shining Life From the Publisher Masterfully constructed . . . a reminder of the power we have within ourselves and within our communities to defeat complacency, indifference, and cruelty.” — Autostraddle Miss gurl's even ranked the Prophets from favorite to least favorite; did your Quran classes not teach you about the very real verse in the book about respecting ALL Prophets? Chapter by chapter, readers will feel a growing appreciation for Lamya’s intelligence, eloquence and courage. Along the way, we learn vivid details about her life and outlook—that, for example, she was a diligent, bright student with a disruptive sense of humor; that her parents immigrated to an Arab nation from a South Asian country for better opportunities and, as a result, that she and her brother experienced bias because of their brown skin; that she was immediately uncomfortable in New York’s gay bar scene and struggled to feel “authentically gay”; that she is ambivalent about America; that she loves her parents and feels OK not coming out to them.

Hijab Butch Blues: Queer Muslim memoir confronting orthodoxy Hijab Butch Blues: Queer Muslim memoir confronting orthodoxy

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!The author performed all steps from study conception and design to writing and editing all drafts. Corresponding author