Author: Lamya H.
Publisher: Icon
Hardback
Staff Pick! Oisín says…
Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H. is so good and my #1 book of the year. It's a memoir about Lamya figuring out their sexuality and gender identity and thinking it through their religion - loosely punctuating the book with stories from the Quran. God being the start and end of those questions about your identity felt big and relatable. If the gap between you and God is small in all other areas of your life - your home, your friends house, your school, the playground - then why would the gap be bigger these inward questions? And why would you shy away from asking what this means your God looks like? In the book Lamya starts questioning these things around 14 and has a cool, relentless way of dragging their faith over to meet their politics throughout as they grow up. The book is a fraying knot of their faith and their queerness, feminism, friendships, anti-racism. A coming of age, a building up of their core beliefs and worldview - the big stuff and the small stuff.
I hadn't really read something like this before - the way that the book holds its stories and beliefs so strongly and pokes them all the time, but never starts from a place of rejection. It starts from a place more curious and goes to places more wobbly, while also unambiguously naming things like white supremacy, racism, homophobia, ignorance or the clunky clashing that can happen on butch + butch dates. The directions it moves in feel true to live and hard to write. I wanted to keep reading even when it's done.