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Fourteen years old and growing up in the Middle East, Lamya is an overachiever and a class clown, qualities that help her hide in plain sight when she realizes she has a crush on her teacher--her female teacher. She's also fourteen when she reads a passage in Quran class about Maryam, known as the Virgin Mary in the Christian Bible, that changes everything. Lamya learns that Maryam was untempted by an angelically handsome man, and later, when told she is pregnant, insists no man has touched her. Could Maryam be... like Lamya? Spanning childhood to an elite college in the US and early adult life in New York City, each essay places Lamya's struggles and triumphs in the context of 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 strength from the faith and hope of Nuh building his ark, begins to build a life of her own--all the while discovering that her identity as a queer, immigrant devout Muslim is, in fact, the answer to her quest for safety and belonging.… (more)
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RATING: 4/5
REVIEW: I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley and am voluntarily writing an honest review.
Hijab Butch Blues is a memoir that is the story of a Southeast Asian Muslim who has to navigate the world between
This is a good book. It made me think in new ways and gave a perspective that isn’t heard from very often. The ways she wove together parts of the Quran with her life was interesting and gave a lot of insight into how she was feeling. I’m not a very religious person myself, but I still found this somewhat captivating.
My one problem with this book was that it jumped around a lot and was sometimes choppy. It isn’t told in an linear fashion and it’s sometimes difficult to understand what came first, or how old she is, or exactly what is going on.
Nonetheless, this was a good book, and I would definitely recommend it, especially to people of (any) faith.
However, somehow I just didn't connect to her story. The author jumps around a lot in her chapters, sometimes as a child in an Arab country, sometimes at various points in her life as a young adult in the U.S. And the jumping around made it hard to see a trajectory of her life and thoughts and growth. I also wasn't sure who her intended audience was. (I'm using she/her because she never specified her pronouns as anything else and did for others in the book) I think her audience, in the end, was herself. And I'm not generally a fan of that sort of highly internalized writing.
This book is getting a lot of positive press. For me, the topic was fascinating and I liked a lot of the message she was trying to get across, but I just didn't think the writing made it very successful.
I hope some others around here read it - I'd love to hear some alternate viewpoints!
very readable, with