Reviews with content warning for Islamophobia - Hijab Butch Blues

Reviews tagging 'Islamophobia'

ewitsmich's review

emotional hopeful informative fast-paced

5.0

This book is a very personal and refreshing glimpse into a queer Muslim woman’s life. It explores the intersectionality of her race, gender, and queerness with her religion. It is structured around Islamic prophets and holy figures and how they relate to the author's life. Highly recommended for anyone who struggles with reconciling race, religion, and queerness.

Content Warnings

amisk23's review

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challenging emotional informative inspiring reflective fast-paced

5.0

Content Warnings

bookishmillennial's review against another edition

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challenging emotional funny hopeful reflective fast-paced

disclaimer: I don’t really give starred reviews. I hope my reviews provide enough information to let you know if a book is for you or not. Find me here: https://linktr.ee/bookishmillennial

I absolutely loved this memoir about reckoning with intersections of Lamya's identity (their queerness, relationship with and parallels to Islam and the Quran, her immigrant experience, being in graduate school/white academic spaces, being brave & vulnerable with friends & self-sabotaging, dating, choosing softer approaches to dialogue) and am so grateful for it.

I cried, I laughed, I raged, I wanted so badly to hug Lamya. What a gift this memoir was. My gratitude to Lamya for being brave & sharing with us - what an honor and privilege to witness part of Lamya's journey via this memoir.

Sharing some quotations that stood out to me below:

“I gather my resentment, my fury that there's nowhere in the world that's magically free of racism and Islamophobia, homophobia and transphobia. I take that burning question and channel it toward new different questions: How can I fight injustices in this place where I have community, where I'm choosing to stay? How can I build a life here that feels, rooted in my principles, even if it will never be perfect?”

“And this is why my story has to remain untold: I have everything to lose. I could lose my family's love, I could lose my love for them.”

“There are other women like me in the Quran. Women who are uninterested in men, who are born wrong, living lives that are entirely out of their control.”

“Decades later, my mother will throw out a casual remark about how easy I was as a teenager and I'll be shocked anew that she never knew, that she never even tried to know.”

“And the truth is also that l love doing these things because I love these people. But in the quiet before Manal responds, I feel confronted anew with the flip side of this way of being with other people—a way that’s based in fear of people leaving, that prevents me from asking things of people in turn.”

“I’ve learned to reframe telling people as inviting in, instead of coming out - inviting into a place of trust, a place for building - and it feels like a waste of emotional energy to tell straight people whom I don’t expect to understand my queerness, don’t intend to count on for advice or support in this area. But what I’ve been noticing about people I haven’t invited into my queerness is that it introduces a barrier between us. What do I talk to these people about? How do I share feelings and intimacies without revealing this huge part of myself? Who am I without this queerness that now pervades my life, my politics, my everything?”