Hijab Butch Blues: A Memoir

Hijab Butch Blues (2023) is a memoir by the pseudonymous author Lamya H. about her life experiences growing up as a nonbinary, queer, observant Muslim immigrant. Lamya H. works as an organizer in New York City and has written for Salon, Vox, Los Angeles Review of Books, and other outlets about her life as a queer Muslim person. Hijab Butch Blues was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and won the Brooklyn Public Library’s Nonfiction Prize in 2023. Every chapter of the memoir focuses on a figure from the Quran and how their stories relate to Lamya’s life and growing understanding of her identity. In her memoir, Lamya describes how she began to understand her queer nonbinary identity, learned to open up to others, and built a supportive community that accepts all aspects of her identity.

This guide refers to the 2024 Icon Books paperback edition.

Content Warning: The source material features depictions of suicidal ideation, panic attacks, racism, anti-gay bias, anti-trans bias, anti-Muslim discrimination, xenophobia, and misogyny and mentions domestic abuse. This guide touches on all these topics.

Summary

Hijab Butch Blues has three parts with chapters grouped by theme rather than chronology. In Part 1, Lamya describes her experiences as a young person realizing her queer and nonbinary identity and confronting racism from her peers. In Chapter 1, Lamya describes reading the story of Maryam (Mary) in the Quran at age 14. She interpreted Maryam’s words to the messenger of Allah as a rejection of men and felt solidarity with her as a person also not interested in men. In Chapter 2, Lamya describes learning about jinn from her aunt—invisible spirits that interfere with people’s lives. The aunt told Lamya that jinn are evil, but later, as a young adult, Lamya learned that jinn can be either good or bad. Lamya also describes how her brown-skinned, Urdu-speaking family was discriminated against by the wealthy, light-skinned Arab speakers in the country where she grew up. When she moved to the United States to attend university, she experienced discrimination for wearing a hijab. Ultimately, she resolved to learn to love jinn despite their differences from humans—a process that helped her learn to love herself despite the prejudices and false assumptions of others. In Chapter 3, Lamya puts forth her interpretation of Allah (God) as nonbinary, like her. She describes how she persisted in her beliefs even when her peers rejected them.

In Part 2, Lamya talks about coming out to her friends as queer and her search for a supportive community. In Chapter 4, she describes coming out to a friend for the first time and, later, to her friend Billy’s family and a doctor. Over time, she became more comfortable talking about her queer identity. In Chapter 5, Lamya describes how she told two of her observant Muslim friends that she is gay and they remained supportive. However, when she told another Muslim friend, they suggested that it’s only fine if Lamya keeps it to herself. Later, Lamya attended an LGBTQ+ event where an attendee told her that he would typically have avoided an observant Muslim. Eventually, Lamya found a Muslim LGBTQ+ group where she was fully accepted. In Chapter 6, Lamya describes how Muslim women are pressured into remaining in bad, even abusive, marriages based on the example of Asiyah, the Egyptian pharaoh’s wife. She also describes the efforts that she has made to stay in the United States as an immigrant and ultimately secure a green card.

In Part 3, Lamya describes her dating history and her efforts to build a supportive community around her activism. In Chapter 7, she notes the past crushes she’s had on many straight women that ended in disappointment for her. Eventually, Lamya’s friend made her download an app to start dating queer women. She went on many bad dates until she met Olivia (Liv), who became her partner. In Chapter 8, Lamya describes reading the story of Yusuf (Joseph) with her friend Manal. In the story, Yusuf is left by his brothers in a well. In their discussion of the story, Lamya came to terms with her own fears of rejection and abandonment and decided to make an effort to be more open with her friends and partner. In Chapter 9, Lamya describes her and Liv’s visit to Lamya’s family for Eid for the first time. They decided to keep their relationship a secret from Lamya’s family because they have anti-LGBTQ+ biases and she isn’t open about her queerness to them. In Chapter 10, Lamya describes a hiking trip that she and her friends went on. During the hike, Lamya reflected on how she uses her pseudonymous writing to fight for a world without bigotry and how her friends and partner support her and one another in creating a more just world.