What a special book. This anonymous memoir tells the story of Lamya H, a non-binary Muslim migrant to the US. Each chapter begins with stories from the Quran tying them to Lamya's life experience.

I absolutely adored it - I'd recommend it to anybody who wants to learn more about Islam and open their mind a little.

As always, thank you to NetGalley and the publisher.

I enjoyed the start of the book exploring Lamya’s childhood and experiences, and how she linked this with her religion. As the book went on however, I found it too heavily based in theology and the memoir aspect felt a bit lost, I got halfway through and was unfortunately unable to finish.

It is so hard to summarise my thoughts on this book! It is a beautiful reflection on the author’s experiences with gender, sexuality, religion, and race that both provides insights to and challenges the perspective of the reader. I loved every moment of reading this!

Written as a series of essays, weaved with stories from the Quran this is an engaging, readable memoir. The book describes the authors experiences of Islamophobia, Homophobia, racism particularly, as a person of colour, who has darker skin and the ridiculous bureaucracy of getting a visa. The author is feisty, standing up for themselves and others against prejudice, whilst having some recognisable dating struggles, including a particularly comic scene of two butches competing to open doors and pay the check. I also enjoyed reading their thoughtful exploration of their faith illustrated by stories from the Quran and the sense of identity through food. An important and entertaining read.

With thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A memoir about a queer Muslim hijabi structured as a series of non-chronological essays, most titled after a Surah in the Quran or a figure in Islam. I found its opening disarming - Lamya finally being able to put into words the imprecise feelings of wanting to disappear that they felt as a teenager, a sense of unbelonging but not quite knowing why. Lamya describes growing up Brown in the middle east and the treatment of her family due to the societal hierarchy among Muslim and POC people in the ME, and feeling like an outsider within their family and peer group. There were many aspects I loved about this memoir, from its earnest reverence of faith to its structure and challenging/confrontational ideas.
This is a brilliant memoir of a queer brown person choosing to keep their connection to their faith, finding a community of queer people who share the same faith, and being so in love and reverent about that faith, this is quite radical and powerful. However, my personal ideas on how religion and queerness may or may not go hand in hand add to that - my knowledge of Islam/the Quran made this a battle at times. Anyways I loved the nostalgia it evoked for people who grew up attending quranic lessons; I loved its depiction of being an immigrant in the US and how long it took to feel like they belonged there, with their life always in balance for a decade enduring the dehumanising process of visa renewal after renewal. I loved their efforts to find community and their depiction of the struggle with racism, islamophobia and navigating queer spaces as a hijabi Muslim. The final point that moved me was its description of how activism can look and change; how disengaging from toxic debates and doing things like hiding your name is self-protection but also activism. And the reiteration that queerness as a brown person comes with different implications and that coming out for other people's benefit or comfort is unnecessary.

Hijab Butch Blues was the book I think I wanted when I read Yasmin Azad's Stay, Daughter. While employing a similar structure of (at times) disconnected memories, there is a cohesive, driving narrative to Lamya H.'s book that was lacking in the former memoir. Lamya's book is about being queer and Muslim, and how these identities are both separate from each other, but also intersecting and overlaying each other. Being gay while being Muslim is tough: "Gay is a hushhush thing, not to be talked about seriously, only to be used as an insult." Being raced in a white-dominated country is also tough: 'Even though Rasha seems quiet and kind, she is entirely unapproachable — not just because she's cool, but also because we're brown." These social norms, communicated even between children, make it very hard for Lamya to come out both as gay to her Muslim friends, and equally, to be accepted as a practicing Muslim among her gay friends. "You all know I'm queer, but I still have to play the cool hijabi. The not-too-religious hijabi, the hijabi who can rock it with the alternative crowd, who won't judge you, who will be accepting and tolerant, the Good Muslim."

What I unexpectedly liked about this book is the way Lamya showed (rather than told) how the stories in the Quran helped her with her life as a queer butch woman living in America. Not being religious, it was interesting to see a non-Christian account of how parables can help you understand life as both a feminist and a queer woman. It was interesting to read feminist pushback about "the infamous 4:34 verse in Surat al-Nisaa that is usually interpreted to condone intimate partner violence." I also particularly enjoyed the section about Allah's gender, or specifically, Allah's lack of a defined gender and pushback around it: 'But Allah uses the royal we in the Quran all the time! Why can't we use a royal they?" "Because that's what the transgenders use.""Yeah. Exactly. It's a good way to express gender nonconformity. If Allah isn't a man or a woman, maybe Allah is trans." Maybe the idea of "God as genderqueer, of God as nonbinary, of God as trans" would have spoken harder to me than a white male God purported by the Christians.

What it left me with was a feeling that this drive toward being out and living visibly as queer, is yet another way of imposing white people ideals on everyone. I will certainly be more cognisant after reading Hijab Butch Blues that many people have to weigh up the benefit of coming out at all to parents "who live across an ocean in a country where queerness operates so differently, isn't openly discussed, isn't an identity". I guess I never fully comprehended how cruel it is to let those parents sit with that knowledge alone without the backdrop of acceptance, and the structures that support social change: "They wouldn't even have the words to understand my queerness, words that aren't derogatory in the language we speak to each other."

This memoir is structured as a series of non-chronological essays, each of which could easily stand alone, which intertwine Lamya's explorations of her sexuality and faith with stories from the Quran. Lamya skips between her early childhood in an unnamed South Asian country to the rest of her childhood and adolescence in an unnamed Middle Eastern country to her adulthood in New York, reflecting on how difficult it has been for her to square her identities as a hijabi Muslim and a gay woman, but also how these different ways of living have illuminated each other. This memoir demonstrates how, although Lamya knows that her Muslim family wouldn't accept her queerness, she herself has found great solace in her faith. Unsurprisingly, some of the essays are stronger than others, with the autobiographical material tying more smoothly into the selected Quran sections, but when the pairings work, they're brilliant.

The opening and closing essays are two of the strongest and most moving. In the first, fourteen-year-old Lamya is bowled over in school by reading Surah Maryam, the story of Maryam (more familiar to a Christian audience as the story of Mary), realising that Maryam went to live alone in a mosque and, when told by the angel that she was going to have a baby boy, said 'How can I have a boy when no man has touched me?' This passage was revelatory to Lamya as well: 'Miss, did Maryam say that no man has touched her because she didn't like men?'. Although her teacher tells her that Maryam was simply trying to send the angel away because she knew that God is always watching and believed he was trying to tempt her, Lamya is sure that she knows differently: 'Maryam is a dyke.' In the final essay, an adult Lamya rants about how Yunus (familiar as Jonah to Christian readers) is her least favourite prophet: 'Yunus's big claim to fame is that he gets swallowed by a whale. And then the whale spits him out... He does very little else in the story.... He preaches about Islam to his people, but they don't listen to him so he decides he's done and he leaves.' However, her friend convinces her to look again at Yunus, arguing that there can be a strength in knowing when you are not going to convince anyone, and need to protect yourself instead, something Lamya embraces when she decides not to come out to her family.

However, even in the essays where I felt the parallels were a bit more forced, the links between this material makes Hijab Butch Blues stand out from other memoirs about sexuality I've read. Impressively, also, despite jumping back and forth in time, Lamya's stories never feel repetitive. My only note (not a complaint, but a note) is that readers looking for a focus on the 'butch' part of the title may be disappointing: Lamya is clear that she likes to dress in more masculine clothing, and talks a bit about a bad date where she and another butch woman both try to play the gentleman, but the idea of butchness isn't really interrogated or explored in the same way as her other identities. Nevertheless, this is a great memoir. 4.5 stars.

Layma H constructs an intricate and well considered portrait of religion and queerness. Most memoirs I read of this collision represent religion as in opposition to queerness and I loved how Layma used their clear in-depth theology knowledge to share with readers how Islam can and should be considered through a lens of queerness.

Although the mixed timeline structure didn’t totally work for me overall, I appreciated the content and sentiment of this book hugely.

i really wanted to love this and lamya h. clearly knows how to write however there were sections of writing that came across as more suited to an op-ed or that seemed didactic in an unnecessary or slightly affected way...the

This is one of the best books I have ever read. I cannot recommend it enough - I learnt so much and enjoyed it so much. I finished it and bought a physical copy because I want it on my shelf. It worked specifically well for me I believe as a queer ex-religious person but I think it would be a great read for anyone.

There can often be a sense among readers of box-ticking when it comes to memoirs — that the author needs to meet a number of criteria of identity in order to be 'worth' reading. But this book is far from an exercise in ticking boxes. It's a refreshing peer into an author and a culture often overlooked.

*eARC received from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*

this was absolutely fantastic and i'm so so happy i read it!! the title and cover are so great, and i love the structure. i'm not familiar with the Qu'ran but i'm so glad i got to learn more about it via this book, and i loved how Lamya made parallels between the lessons of the Qu'ran and their own coming-of-age as a gnc Muslim lesbian. her narrative voice was so compelling, and brought a brilliant and intersectional perspective to queer memoir we desperately need. it was also really thought-provoking to read about coming out in Muslim spaces - it's important to disrupt the narrative that the only way to be a happy, fulfilled queer person is to tell every single person in your life that you're queer, and that not telling your family is lying. i really can't recommend this enough, and i can't wait to read the author's future work.

This memoir takes us through multiple fascinating interweaving narratives and stages of Lamya's life, from her early discovery of the various parts of her identities as a queer Muslim woman, to how she reconciles and thinks about them as an adult.

Something I found especially fascinating in this book was how Lamya would take a story from the Qur'an, or a local legend, and pick out aspects that have been lurking under the surface, ripe for analysis, whether potential queer references or quiet acts of resistance and revolution.

There is a real power and wisdom to this book.

I received an advanced copy of this book from the publisher and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

A beautifully written memoir on religion and queerness and how the two can co-exist.

Lamya takes verses and stories from the Quran and applies them to her own life and sexuality. She showcases how queerness can exist within Islam and you can be a butch hijabi!

I think Islam and queerness is often something people don’t put together, both from an Islamic or non-Islamic background and I really enjoyed seeing religious queer representation.

This was an absolutely fantastic book.. Wonderfully written and informative I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.

I adored Hijab Butch Blues. The writing style is gorgeous - conversational but somehow also poetic in tone. I couldn't put this book down, which is rare for me and non-fiction.
I initially thought that the book might be outside of my frame of reference - and there certainly was a lot which was new to me. I found the insights into Islam, and the integration of narratives from the Quran alongside the different chapters of Lamya's life, to be really enlightening. I learnt a lot from reading this, but also found lots to empathise with and plenty of familiar ground - the similarities inherent in the experience of discovering and accepting one's own queerness, and integrating that into how you want to live your life. I highlighted so many sections which particularly resonated with me, and the queer indispensability discussion hit me especially hard.
An absolutely wonderful book, which I haven't stopped talking about to anyone who will listen since I finished reading it!

I really enjoyed this book; Lamya's story shares with the reader her journey from childhood, discovering her own interpretations of her faith and her own identity as a queer person.

It's beautifully written; stories of prophets from the Qu'ran sit alongside Lamya's own experiences and revelations. I had limited knowledge of Islam before and really enjoyed the author's takes and interpretations of the lessons. I also didn't realise how many of the stories of the Qu'ran are similar to stories in the old testament and enjoyed being able to thinking about her beliefs in attachment to my own.

The book had the potential to be an oppressive memoir, but actually love is such a common theme throughout. Yes, there are scenes and occurrences you wish no human had been subjected to, but the author's way of framing and using these experiences felt really empowering.

Not only did I enjoy this book, I learned a lot from it too.