Hijab Butch Blues

By: Lamya H

When fourteen-year-old Lamya H realizes she has a crush on her teacher - her female teacher- she covers up her attraction, an attraction she can’t yet name, by playing up her roles as overachiever and class clown. She’s spent her childhood in the Middle East feeling like her own desires and dreams don’t matter, and it’s easier to hide in plain sight. To disappear. But one day in Quran class, she reads a passage about Maryam that changes everything. Lamya learns that Maryam was untempted by an angelically handsome man, and that later, when told she is pregnant, Maryam insists no man has touched her. Could Maryam, uninterested in men, be…like Lamya?

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 life-long quest for safety and belonging lies in owning her identity as a queer, devout Muslim immigrant.

This searingly intimate memoir in essays, spanning Lamya's childhood to her arrival in the United States for college through early-adult life in New York City, tells a universal story of courage, trust, and love, celebrating what it means to be a seeker and an architect of one’s own life.