Hijab Butch Blues: A Memoir

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I think this memoir was very successful in discussing the nuances of being part of both queer and Muslim communities. The author talks about the struggles they encountered as a hijabi person among non-Muslim queer people who either had a hard time relating the author's experiences or downright invalidated them. At the same time, within the Muslim community, the existence of queerness within the community is either never talked about or deemed as a western influence or sometimes labelled as a "mental health issue". The author also argues that the coming out experience looks very different for Muslim queer people especially when their only tie to their culture is through their relationship with their family and can be lost if their family doesn't accept their queerness. I want to focus on the reality for LGBTQIA+ Muslims. There have been far too many news stories about queer Muslims contemplating suicide or worse, dying by suicide. As for those to whom she has opened up, Lamya has reframed it as “inviting in” rather than “coming out”, and she believes that being vulnerable can help others become more understanding and accepting. Lamya expresses that she has often felt alone growing up, and this feeling followed her briefly when she moved to New York City to attend college and graduate school. Given that she was not out to her family overseas or her family in upstate New York, she yearned for a community, one that would see her as her authentic self. Throughout the memoir, Lamya recounts her experiences with losing certain friendships due to being queer as well as facing the fear of abandonment once she became too vulnerable.

It turns out 2023 has been the year of the memoir for my reading list so far. I didn't set out to do that intentionally, but I think I'm up to around 11-ish and most have been wonderful. It's very rich, coming from a woman who is herself part of the LGBT community and should know not to push people into these stereotypes. But let the double standards prevail. It’s like the chapter for Maryam [Mary]. You positing her sapphism was great, because Maryam is so often desexualised. Lesbians and queer women, unless they’re commodified within a pornographic framework, are desexualised too. I love that you reintroduced sexuality to Mary, who is positioned on one side of the dichotomy a lot of the time.The memoir is uniquely told in the format of chapters devoted to a prophet and/or religious story from the Qur’an and mini-essays of Lamya’s takeaways from them. As I read “Hijab Butch Blues,” certain ideas and themes kept recurring in my mind that highlight the essence of the memoir. 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.

Speaking of Córdova, her memoir that is simultaneously a love story and a rumination on the activist movements and spaces she was part of epitomizes writing about the personal and political in conjunction with one another. In the sprawling narrative, Córdova touches on her butch identity as well as butch-femme dynamics in 1970s LA lesbian spaces, exploring lesbian and feminist politics of the time alongside a very personal narrative. I recommend pairing this with Brown Neon. The response Lamya gets from the teacher is the usual heteronormative answer I’ve heard in Quran class myself, but it doesn’t matter. With this simple yet monumental realisation that Lamya is not alone in feeling like this, they are empowered to keep living.So while Hijab Butch Blues left me with no shortage of questions of my own, it also was a comforting read. HAZRAT 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 🤩 Lamya’s story provides a beacon of hope as she does not give up her seeking for the community. She attends various LGBTQ+-friendly Islamic events in which she is introduced to a plethora of people who are like-minded. Lamya finds her people – the people who love and accept all parts of her, the people she always yearned for. Anecdotally, I know of how these exact attitudes lead to LGBTQIA+ Muslims being subject to conversion practices, as if queerness is something that needs fixing.

AND IF ALLAH's (SWT) GENDER HAS NOT BEEN SPECIFIED ANYWHERE IN THE QURAN NOR THE HADITH.....THEN HE IS NON-BINARY, Y'ALL 🙌🏻🎉🥳!!!!!!!!!!!! A queer hijabi Muslim immigrant survives her coming-of-age by drawing strength and hope from stories in the Quran inthis “raw and relatable memoir that challenges societal norms and expectations” (Linah Mohammad, NPR).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. Butch women and trans women challenge gender norms in a way that really, really upsets people Tabs Benjamin Their assimilation into American culture is rife with challenges. They face homophobia among the Muslims in their study group and Islamophobia among the queers they meet at house parties, and it is their political integrity and intrepid moral compass that anchors all of these experiences. In wrestling with the meaning of the different surahs, they also uncover their own barriers to vulnerability. During the chapter named after Yusef, a Quranic figure who was left for dead at the bottom of a well by his jealous brothers, only to later command a ministerial position in the government where he comes to hold power over the fate of his brothers, Lamya debates the interpretation with her friend Manal, “I’m just saying that staying open to love is not some magic bullet that makes abandonment issues disappear, okay?” Yet it is not really Yusef they are debating. Both Lamya and the reader, though perhaps not Manal, are aware that the meaning of the surah pertains more pressingly to a woman named Liv, Lamya’s girlfriend of two years, who only wants them to “let your guard down” and “let me in.”