What a great read! A queer coming-of-age story. Beautiful and sad story about reconciling one's religion and culture with identity. 4/5 stars only because some of the bits from the Quran were a bit dry for me but I appreciate the ways in which Lamya translates them to their life.

Hijab Butch Blues
By Lamya H

A queer hijabi Muslim immigrant survives her coming-of-age by drawing strength and hope from stories in the Quran in this daring, provocative, and radically hopeful memoir.

I enjoyed reading this memoir formatted as essays that connected inner struggles of queerness to the sacred scripture of the Quran, to find understanding of self in this coming of age story. I thought that the writing was engrossingly captivating that tackled important themes of race, religion, immigration, islamophobia and homophobia that is enlightening and one that brings understanding on many levels. I thought that the writing was sophisticated and insightful.

HIJAB BUTCH BLUES is a phenomenal book. It's a voice and story we need in LGBTQIAP+ storytelling today. It's a perfect addition to the conversation started in Leslie Feinberg's STONE BUTCH BLUES. I'll be using HIJAB BUTCH BLUES in several of my upcoming classes this summer and fall. I can't wait to dig into it with my creative writing students.

This is a queer Muslim immigrant's memoir in essays that pairs stories from the Quran with stories of their own life. I didn't know what to expect when I picked this up, but I enjoyed it immensely, particularly the perspective Lamya has on religion and God as it relates to queerness. *Advance copy provided by the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

I loved this. I loved the parallels between the pieces of Lamya's memoir and the stories of the qu'ran. Very excited to see what this author puts out next and this is a very important story to be told.

Hijab Butch Blues is a poignant intersectional piece that is both deeply personal and highly relatable for Muslims and non-Muslims, queer people and non-queer people alike.

I finished reading this book a week ago but I wanted to get my thoughts together before writing down a review. Hijab butch blues is a queer Muslim memoir and I’m glad it exists in the world. However, it felt incomplete and don’t know if that was due to this being a debut or the anonymity surrounding the author for their safety. I appreciated how Lamya walked us along her life, her faith, the discovery of her queerness and how they have had to hide it all from their family that still lives in a different country and have different expectations of them. The reason why I am not giving this book 5stars was because at times the transitions between her life and her stories and the religious text felt at times incongruent or too abrupt. The author uses their faith to have meaning out of things and explain why it’s ok to be queer and loved (and I 100% agree with this, but as someone agnostic I couldn’t relate to the parallels drawn by the author between religious texts and their life). I would have appreciated a little more introduction or explanation on this.
The memoir is also a little slow, and I ended up listening to this book and would recommend that format for this memoir.

I loved this book! Reading about Lamya provides wonderful insight into the myriad ways in which a person experiences challenges in their life. The family dynamic, how to be your own self when your family may not accept you. Weighing the possible results of sharing your personal identity with people who know you from a shared religion, or college campus. This book is for anyone wanting to understand another person's experience.

I'm searching for the words to describe what an incredible piece of work this is. Hijab Butch Blues consists of several personal essays where Lamya goes through the stories of various Quranic figures and how they impacted and sometimes paralleled her life. I love her readings -- some for their familiarity to me and others because they presented a perspective I'd never considered before (shout out to Yusuf and Yunus specifically). There's so much grace throughout this collection. 5 stars

"Hijab Butch Blues" by Lamya H is a memoir of her life, thus far, with a specific focus on being a queer person from an unspecified but religious country who eventually moves to New York City. The chapters switch between stories from Lamya's own life and stories from Islamic texts through which the author makes connections to her own life. She must decide how to navigate being a queer person who wants to experience her sexuality in fullness with the constraints of a family who would likely banish her. Even though Lamya has long since moved away from her family and has started a life of her own in a very queer-friendly place, she still feels the tug of religion and family. I enjoyed the interspersing of religious stories and hearing about Lamya's journey, and I know this is a memoir, but this book did not have much of an arc, and I often questioned where it was headed. I'm glad Lamya started to find what she needed to feel content in her life.

This was phenomenal! Told as a series of interconnected essays, Lamya’s memoir tackles so many topics. Each essay weaves together a story from the Quran and some element of the author’s life. The essays take the reader on a journey navigating immigration and coming out (and coming out and coming out) and racism and Islamophobia and anxiety and isolation and so much more all written with an undercurrent of hope. I loved the nuance with which they approach all of these topics. She talks about growing up a South Asian immigrant in a rich Middle Eastern country and then moving to the United States for college, about their experiences wearing hijbab in non-Muslim spaces, coming to terms with their sexuality and gender, and the stuggle explaining to queer white American friends why she can’t just come out to her family.

The writing had a good flow to it and I appreciated the narrative being split into essays because it made it easy to pick up one whenever I had a small amount of free time. Though I often found that I either wanted to keep going and/or had to take some extra time after finishing the essay to think about what I had just read.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC! All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I would give this 4.5 stars. I thought it was enlightening and impactful and really enjoyed how it was structured. It was fascinating, emotional, and even cathartic at times to learn about the author's experiences, and I thought the choice to parallel personal stories with those of people in the Quran was excellent. While I am not Muslim myself and not familiar with all of the characters mentioned, I have always loved learning about how different people can interpret the same religious stories in different ways. I really enjoyed the way this memoir captured that. As a queer South Asian, I found many similarities in my own life to Lamya H's story, and I appreciate the author's bravery in sharing all of this. Overall, I highly recommend this memoir as an educational and emotional experience, and wish the author all the best.

Content Warnings: suicidal ideation, racism, Islamophobia, mentions of physical and domestic abuse, mentions of transphobia and misogyny, homophobia

Absolutely brilliant. Thoughtful, creative, honesty, complicated, beautifully written. A book of loving questions, a book of grappling, a book that opens doorways and doorways. Cannot recommend highly enough.

Hijab Butch Blues was one of my most anticipated books of the year, because I love memoirs about queer religious people. I love learning about their experiences, and how their queerness intersects with their religion and race and other identities. As someone who was raised very religious (Traditional Catholic, now a pagan) I find these memoirs of queer religious people to be healing and wonderful. That it is possible for one to be queer and still feel like they have a place in the religion they love and grew up in. I’m so glad that books like these exist now for the millions of queer religious peoples around the world who desperately need to know that they are not alone.
Hijab Butch Blues did not disappoint. Lamya writes with an ease and familiarity that makes reading this book feel like a conversation with an old and dear friend. She seamlessly flows between retelling parts from the Quran and her life: drawing parallels from them to experiences from throughout her life. She speaks on how her different identities, a brown queer Muslim, all intersect, and how difficult it was for her to truly find her people. People who understood all facets of her being, and could relate to her, and the difficulties of being a brown queer Muslim in America, a country that does not love those things. She tells us about a harrowing series of bad dates, and how it all ends happily. Most importantly, she talks about her healing journey from internalized racism, Islamaphobia and homophobia. She details how she finally figured out why she held herself so cut off from the people she loved most: queer people are terrified of being left, so they make themselves indispensable to the people they love. She figures this out from a discussion of a story from the Quran with a friend of hers. That idea hit me so hard I had to take a moment to digest that revelation. I think what was most impactful was in the beginning chapters, when Lamya talked about her passive suicidal thoughts (she just wanted to stop existing.) How she would disappear in social situations. I saw my younger self in those chapters, and it was extremely emotional.
Overall, this was an absolute gem of a book to read, and I can’t recommend it enough! 5/5 stars

We need more stories like this in the world. Throughly enjoyed this work and getting to hear this perspective.

Brilliant retelling of the stories of the Bible and the Koran/Quran from a fresh point of view which humanizes the people and events described there. Told over these is a memoir of a hijab wearing believer who struggles to accept both her gayness while seeking acceptance of herself in these stories. Insightful and thought-provoking.

This is a lovely memoir that was truly a breath of fresh air. Told in form of essays each chapter focuses on aspects of the Quran and the author finds ways to compare it to their own life and queer, Muslim identity. I truly learned a lot reading this book and it was a new perspective that i haven't read plenty of.

Such an honest, smart, complex memoir! I loved the book being organized as memories and then studies of the Quran. Lamya H walks this thin line of being religious and then questioning and challenging the religion. I thought it was enlightening and brave and inspiring. Thanks to Dial Press for the advanced copy. What a gift.

This book made me feel seen more deeply than any other memoir ever has. I'm still reeling from the surprise of that. The author is a queer nonbinary immigrant Muslim woman of color. I am a bisexual-married-to-a-man cis American Episcopalian with skin the color of skim milk. And yet.

At the end of a yoga practice, my favorite YouTube yogi often closes by saying "There is a place inside of you where all the Universe dwells. When you are in that place in you and I am in that place in me, we are one." Reading this book felt like that.

This memoir is deeply spiritual. It has such a rare, but important exploration of religion (specifically Islam) and queerness. It is told through small vignettes in non-chronological order throughout Lamya's life. I really appreciated her honesty, vulnerability, and candor. As someone who isn't Muslim, I can not comment on the representation. However, I do think she offers fresh perspectives and reinterpretations to stories in the Quran.

At first, the writing style was a bit difficult to get into. I also, selfishly, wanted more from the author and felt that some essays were a little long. Regardless, I appreciated the meditativeness of the text and I gained a lot from reading this.