Hijab Butch Blues: A Memoir

“I, too, have questions for God—when I’m falling in love with a woman, when I’m figuring out my gender, when I move to the U.S. for college away from everyone I know and can’t make sense of why I feel so wrong. Like Ibrahim, I, too, can’t help but turn to God with my questions, my doubts, my anger, my love. Like Ibrahim, I, too, hope that my heart may be satisfied.”

In this quote from the Preface, Lamya connects her desire to understand her queer identity to her religious practice through the connection she feels with the prophet Ibrahim. This Preface establishes the structure used throughout the memoir, where Lamya uses figures from the Quran and her interpretation of them to articulate and embrace her Queer Identity and Community.

“I am fourteen the year I realize I am gay.

Realize is a strong word. It’s not exactly something I realize in the conventional sense; it’s not a sudden epiphany, or even something I have language for yet. It’s more of a steady gathering of information, a piling up of block upon block until suddenly a tower appears. A tower that is no longer part of the background, a tower that—unlike a scattered set of blocks—is no longer ignorable.”

Lamya describes her embrace of her queer identity as gradual, reflecting the trajectory of her arc over the course of the memoir. She uses the metaphor of a tower slowly coming in to being, block by block, to describe how, piece by piece, she finally constructed her identity

“I am fourteen the year I read Surah Maryam. The year I choose not to die. The year I choose to live.”

At the age of 14 years old, Lamya began Developing a Personal Relationship With Islam. She identified strongly with the figure of Maryam, and she positions this as deeply influential to her life choices—in this case, the choice to live instead of die.