This moving and intimate memoir, in essays which range from the author’s childhood to their residency in the United States for university in New York City, shares their quest for personal freedom.
I felt particularly drawn to this memoir, Hijab Butch Blues, by writer Lamya H. It was our link of being queers and struggling to come out, yet having very different experiences, which attracted me to the book.
Lamya’s awakening to their internalized racism, stimulated by the Islamophobia they grew up with, was a striking aspect of their story. They came to this realization when attending graduate school in the United States—how their self-hatred was based on the hate constantly directed toward them.
The distinctions between Lamya and me are multiple. I am a white settler of English heritage, raised by Anglican parents, having lived in Western Canada all my life. My pronouns are she/her. Lamya H. is non-binary, they/them, Muslim, and a Desi child (Desi means a person of South Asian descent living abroad). Lamya’s family moved to an unnamed Middle East country so they could attend school. And spiritually, instead of being taught the biblical teachings, like myself, Lamya was raised on the Quran.
The book title is named to honour Leslie Feinberg’s acclaimed 1993 novel Stone Butch Blues. Lamya H., in an interview with Sabir Sultan at PEN America on February 9, 2023, said that Stone Butch Blues has been a pivotal work that greatly influenced their writing: “Stone Butch Bluesis one of my favorite queer books because of how effortlessly intersectional it is, and how unapologetically political it is. I love the ways in which it connects struggles around class, labour, gender, sexuality, and race—among other things. Reading it years ago taught me that it’s possible to write a book as intimate as a memoir that is able to zoom out and comment on the world. I titled my book Hijab Butch Blues to pay homage to the legacy of Leslie Feinberg’s foundational text, and to the younger me, learning that a different world was worth fighting for.”
Lamya H’s Hijab Butch Blues, does just this. It expresses intimate memoir but also social and political realities.
Early in the book Lamya expresses suicidal thoughts as a 14-year-old in school, feeling “acutely ashamed” for attractions to women. It is noteworthy that the author courageously had a readiness to address suicidal experiences in this memoir. Suicide is traditionally viewed as a sin in Islam.
Lamya speaks of feeling so deeply alone and wanting to die when experiencing these feelings of attraction to women. But then discovers, in Quran texts during class, the woman Maryam—the Arabic name for Mary, mother of Jesus. Lamya’s classmates read aloud about Maryam during childbirth, where Maryam says that she wished she had died. In that moment, Lamya feels understood in a way that they weren’t before. With a lively curiosity, Lamya wonders if Maryam could have been queer, because Maryam consistently insists that “no man has touched her.” A teenage Lamya earnestly asks their teacher: “Did Maryam say that no man has touched her because she didn’t like men?”
They also recount the colourism in the Desi community, in which Lamya was treated very differently from her younger brother who was their mother’s favourite. Lamya recalls being pressured to wear makeup to make their skin three shades lighter than it actually was.
Lamya talks about various aspects of being “othered.” Colourism is definitely an emotionally grueling experience. Lamya speaks of how, as a child, they felt so isolated by being othered they used to think they were a “jinn” or spirit, (believed in Islam to be unseen by humans), simply because of the colour of their skin. They describe feeling invisible, but also being “this scary, disgusting creature” to white people and light-skinned Arabs.
When Lamya eventually moved to United States to complete their graduate studies, it was their friend Rashid, who confronted them about their attitude of assuming white and light-skinned people were better than them. Rashid and Lamya compare their upbringings. Rashid as a Black Muslim in America who was raised on stories about Malcolm X and the Black Panthers. Lamya’s family, on the other hand, reminisced “fondly about being colonized by the British.”
It’s at this point in their friendship with Rashid, that Lamya comes to the realization about being racist against one’s self. They realized they needed to stop hating themself. This, to me as the reader, is a seminal turning point in their life. A crucial, vital, healing one.
Throughout the book, the author adeptly weaves Islamic stories from the Quran for the reader to contemplate, while showing how they have considered them very deeply to carve a new path for their new identity.
And at the end of the book, Lamya reflects on the story of the whale in both the Bible and the Quran which is an analogy to compassion and mercy for Jonah and Yunus:
. . . This better world—that is the world I’m fighting for from inside the whale, this world I want to be birthed into. A world that is kinder, more generous, more just. A world that takes care of the marginalized, the poor, the sick . . . But I’ve found a few smaller versions of this world—in the ground rules Liv [Lamya’s partner] and I set on the bus en route to meeting my family; in the grace Cara [a friend] showed me when I came out to her; in the patience with which Zu [another close friend] mentored me.
Lamya is finding their way, of being able to find a trusted few to come out to, to make peace in the world. And in closing, Lamya touched me deeply, when they finished the book by saying: “This is the world fourteen-year-old me couldn’t even begin to imagine. I’m already here.”
