In the first section of the book, Lamya discusses her adolescent years and her desire to die, or more accurately, to never have existed. One day during Quran class, she’s snapped to attention when she hears a verse being read about Maryam wanting to die, and feels a deep kinship. What do you think it is about adolescence, and especially being a teenage girl, that contributes to the desire to disappear? Lamya talks about being bored with her life, bored with her classes, and feeling nothing. Did Lamya’s experiences remind you at all of your own teenage angst? How did you deal with those feelings? Did you have any moments, like Lamya reading about Maryam, that made you feel less alone? What did you think of how Lamya brings us into her life, her world, her story?
I think the teenage desire to disappear comes a lot from the transition from children as an entity of their parents to individuals with their own interests, needs, and desires; yet still considered children legally and so are often still treated like an entity of their parents. It's so difficult to navigate because as a teen, I definitely needed the guidance I resented and only realize the necessity of looking back on it as an adult. This desire is only further complicated when we are othered in various capacities--for gender, race, sexuality, our bodies, etc.--and to a fraught teenage mind, disappearing seems like the easiest, most succinct way to get ourselves back to ourselves.
I simply love this book, the way Lamya brings us into her life with anecdotes, like precious beads on a string; the way she relates to her religion and makes its stories new again, so unexpectedly but honestly true to her real self. The way she finds/creates miracles in her difficult life. How she forged a community. The descriptions are so beautiful! I so admire her strength, creativity, insight, and positive energy. I've met a couple of religious people in my life so transcendent they could almost make me believe in God, and Lamya H may be one of them.
I completely identify with Lamya's boredom and sense of not belonging. I'm from a small town in the Midwest and, even as a child, wanted more than anything else to see the world. I couldn't WAIT to get out of that oppressive, prudish, anti-intellectual small town where everyone knew everyone's business. I remember High School graduation when everyone was crying and all I felt was a huge sense of relief -- finally! However, I only ever want to disappear at parties where I don't know anyone.
My lifeline was the local library and my parents' subscription to Newsweek. (This was decades before the internet or cellphones.) Every week I'd read Newsweek cover to cover, even the theater reviews, which could hardly be less relevant, but I was THAT bored. I'd read Vogue at the library. I never ended up living in NYC, but it's in many ways my Mecca.
I also read tons of books, but magazines were like a department store window into the wider world I longed for.
Thanks so much, Roxane, for featuring this wonderful book that I would probably never otherwise have discovered.
I related to that as a teen and sometimes I still feel that way now, nearing 40 😂
I think when you are in a social environment with expectations for how you should live and think, and you realize there are aspects of that world that do not fit you, and you cannot make them fit or change your innate self, there’s this void that enters your heart and mind. You don’t want to die, per se, but you recognize there will be this part of yourself and your life that is going to be Other. There doesn’t appear to be an alternative. And the easiest way to avoid feeling that isolation and discomfort is an absolute stop. Just somehow be magically removed from the equation so you don’t feel wrong.
I didn't directly relate to the feeling of wanting to disappear, the boredom, or the teenage angst. But the scene where Lamya excitedly asks her teacher if Maryam didn't like boys? Whew, that got me. I can remember being in many similar situations as a tween and teen. One that stands out is a friend talking about the show South of Nowhere. I thought she was gearing up to talk about relating to the queerness of it - she absolutely was not! I got so close to feeling less alone, but then it slipped away.
I totally relate to her desire to disappear not “die.” At 5’10 in my early teens, I wanted to “fit’ in, be average like everyone else, blend in with the herd. Teenhood is particularly hard on girls. But coupled that with an extremely patriarchal and conservative society, it’s hard for women to find a place. I didn’t have a “Maryam” moment, but I had an epiphany one day that there were things about me, about the world around me that I COULD NOT change, so I learned to accept me the way I was/am. As I read this book, I’m comforted by the knowledge that Lamya is okay now.
I've been turning this question over through the day, but it wasn't until I listened to an Instagram Live that Tressie tMcMillan Cottom did that it came together. She mentioned being raised to be stoic; I think I was raised not to think my own feelings and experiences were important. I was taught by my parents and their church that I was just here to do for others, and I never really learned to appreciate life for itself. That was especially true, unsurprisingly, during my angsty teenage years.
I really appreciated the way that Lamya wove the stories of the Quran into her own biography. While I've left all church/spirituality behind, I loved hearing the way she told the stories and took meaning from them.
I wonder if these feelings --wanting to disappear--- are universal or if there are cultures where girls feel empowered and strengthened, maybe by family or other bonds. Then there is the specificity of individuality. My mother grew up in Peru in a typically conservative creole family; she knew she wanted to be a doctor when she was 9, and she pursued that goal with vigor and indomitability her whole life. She most certainly did not want to disappear. I have a cousin (named after my mom, incidentally) who was similar. Some women/girls seem to hurricane through life. I always blamed my massive insecurities and lack of self-esteem on being brought to the US, frankly
As a queer kid who didn't have language for my queerness but was DEFINITELY bullied for not conforming to restrictive ideas about gender, this felt incredibly relatable. Just wanting to not be perceived, because I couldn't understand what about me was so wrong and even when I tried (briefly) to dress like the girls who bullied me, that did nothing to stop it. Lamya descriptions of her emotional landscape felt so reflective of my own, but contrasted with the framework and support she got from the stories of Maryam. She found representation, even if it was just a small amount.
This feels particularly poignant right now, where we have some of the greatest queer representation in history at the same time as a violent, oppressive backlash against queer and trans people existing publicly. This regressive backlash reminds me of being a queer kid in the 90s, but I didn't have the representation, just the bigotry.
The desire to disappear. That’s quite a statement. Disappear from the current situation or disappear period? For for me, which comes from an 80s upbringing - vacating/leaving Reagan, Thatcher, AIDS, and being on the cusp on something new. I think, esp for myself, when you are alone and there are no real life heroes - you look for those heroes and lighthouses - wherever they appear. And truly in the most unlikeliest of places. Characters in comic books, movies, myths? How many imaginary heroines have I borrowed strength from? And I think, well believe, that Lamya’s desire to disappear is rooted in some sort of unspoken trauma. Boredom? I am not sure daily boredom is typical of “average” of a teenager. Forgive me for any absolutely off base comments.
Lamya probably opens the door for the rest of the night and day. The growing up it’s hard. What comes up next with adulthood. Perhaps Lamya found on Maryam repetitive dissent and spiraling the ‘I’over and over. The teenager little voice in my head speaks trough immature affirmations such as I ¡ didn’t ask to be born!. The self, it’s conditions. “I”by being plural gave us three different Lamyas. I also think suicidal thoughts are an ongoing conflict. There’s horror, affliction. Scared by the webs. Lamya thinks on agency.
Yes, I absolutely had the desire to disappear as a teenager. I think it came from a feeling of humiliation of being alive - a realization that the person I was and the person I wanted to be were so far apart that the gap between the two felt insurmountable.
I would spend many hours of my mid-teens contemplating ways to disappear myself, specifically trying to identify ways that wouldn't bring shame on my parents or traumatize my sibling. Of course, that was impossible. I couldn't identify one, so instead I was paralysed by this inertia for several years and the memory of the pull of that darkness still haunts me today.
Lamya's experience certainly brought it all back, but in a way that I'm glad to be confronted with as an adult, so I can make sense of it. I wasn't out as queer yet, not to myself or anyone else, but I had certainly had experienced same sex attracctioon for at least a decade. I wonder if that suppression of identity and internalized shame was partly to blame for my misery. It is logical for that to be the source of my dissonance. I just felt so completely misunderstood and alone.
I do remember wishing for something to happen in my life so that I could explain the feeling of not wanting to exist, something tangible so that I at least had a reason for feeling that way. Then when I was 17, my dad was diagnosed as terminally ill with less than a year left to live. I snapped out of it and never let myself get caught in that place again. I hadn't known yet what death was, and once I was aware of the permanency of it, and the grief it left, I understood it was not something to consider anymore.
I think the teenage desire to disappear comes a lot from the transition from children as an entity of their parents to individuals with their own interests, needs, and desires; yet still considered children legally and so are often still treated like an entity of their parents. It's so difficult to navigate because as a teen, I definitely needed the guidance I resented and only realize the necessity of looking back on it as an adult. This desire is only further complicated when we are othered in various capacities--for gender, race, sexuality, our bodies, etc.--and to a fraught teenage mind, disappearing seems like the easiest, most succinct way to get ourselves back to ourselves.
I simply love this book, the way Lamya brings us into her life with anecdotes, like precious beads on a string; the way she relates to her religion and makes its stories new again, so unexpectedly but honestly true to her real self. The way she finds/creates miracles in her difficult life. How she forged a community. The descriptions are so beautiful! I so admire her strength, creativity, insight, and positive energy. I've met a couple of religious people in my life so transcendent they could almost make me believe in God, and Lamya H may be one of them.
I completely identify with Lamya's boredom and sense of not belonging. I'm from a small town in the Midwest and, even as a child, wanted more than anything else to see the world. I couldn't WAIT to get out of that oppressive, prudish, anti-intellectual small town where everyone knew everyone's business. I remember High School graduation when everyone was crying and all I felt was a huge sense of relief -- finally! However, I only ever want to disappear at parties where I don't know anyone.
My lifeline was the local library and my parents' subscription to Newsweek. (This was decades before the internet or cellphones.) Every week I'd read Newsweek cover to cover, even the theater reviews, which could hardly be less relevant, but I was THAT bored. I'd read Vogue at the library. I never ended up living in NYC, but it's in many ways my Mecca.
I also read tons of books, but magazines were like a department store window into the wider world I longed for.
Thanks so much, Roxane, for featuring this wonderful book that I would probably never otherwise have discovered.
I related to that as a teen and sometimes I still feel that way now, nearing 40 😂
I think when you are in a social environment with expectations for how you should live and think, and you realize there are aspects of that world that do not fit you, and you cannot make them fit or change your innate self, there’s this void that enters your heart and mind. You don’t want to die, per se, but you recognize there will be this part of yourself and your life that is going to be Other. There doesn’t appear to be an alternative. And the easiest way to avoid feeling that isolation and discomfort is an absolute stop. Just somehow be magically removed from the equation so you don’t feel wrong.
I didn't directly relate to the feeling of wanting to disappear, the boredom, or the teenage angst. But the scene where Lamya excitedly asks her teacher if Maryam didn't like boys? Whew, that got me. I can remember being in many similar situations as a tween and teen. One that stands out is a friend talking about the show South of Nowhere. I thought she was gearing up to talk about relating to the queerness of it - she absolutely was not! I got so close to feeling less alone, but then it slipped away.
I totally relate to her desire to disappear not “die.” At 5’10 in my early teens, I wanted to “fit’ in, be average like everyone else, blend in with the herd. Teenhood is particularly hard on girls. But coupled that with an extremely patriarchal and conservative society, it’s hard for women to find a place. I didn’t have a “Maryam” moment, but I had an epiphany one day that there were things about me, about the world around me that I COULD NOT change, so I learned to accept me the way I was/am. As I read this book, I’m comforted by the knowledge that Lamya is okay now.
I've been turning this question over through the day, but it wasn't until I listened to an Instagram Live that Tressie tMcMillan Cottom did that it came together. She mentioned being raised to be stoic; I think I was raised not to think my own feelings and experiences were important. I was taught by my parents and their church that I was just here to do for others, and I never really learned to appreciate life for itself. That was especially true, unsurprisingly, during my angsty teenage years.
I really appreciated the way that Lamya wove the stories of the Quran into her own biography. While I've left all church/spirituality behind, I loved hearing the way she told the stories and took meaning from them.
I wonder if these feelings --wanting to disappear--- are universal or if there are cultures where girls feel empowered and strengthened, maybe by family or other bonds. Then there is the specificity of individuality. My mother grew up in Peru in a typically conservative creole family; she knew she wanted to be a doctor when she was 9, and she pursued that goal with vigor and indomitability her whole life. She most certainly did not want to disappear. I have a cousin (named after my mom, incidentally) who was similar. Some women/girls seem to hurricane through life. I always blamed my massive insecurities and lack of self-esteem on being brought to the US, frankly
As a queer kid who didn't have language for my queerness but was DEFINITELY bullied for not conforming to restrictive ideas about gender, this felt incredibly relatable. Just wanting to not be perceived, because I couldn't understand what about me was so wrong and even when I tried (briefly) to dress like the girls who bullied me, that did nothing to stop it. Lamya descriptions of her emotional landscape felt so reflective of my own, but contrasted with the framework and support she got from the stories of Maryam. She found representation, even if it was just a small amount.
This feels particularly poignant right now, where we have some of the greatest queer representation in history at the same time as a violent, oppressive backlash against queer and trans people existing publicly. This regressive backlash reminds me of being a queer kid in the 90s, but I didn't have the representation, just the bigotry.
The desire to disappear. That’s quite a statement. Disappear from the current situation or disappear period? For for me, which comes from an 80s upbringing - vacating/leaving Reagan, Thatcher, AIDS, and being on the cusp on something new. I think, esp for myself, when you are alone and there are no real life heroes - you look for those heroes and lighthouses - wherever they appear. And truly in the most unlikeliest of places. Characters in comic books, movies, myths? How many imaginary heroines have I borrowed strength from? And I think, well believe, that Lamya’s desire to disappear is rooted in some sort of unspoken trauma. Boredom? I am not sure daily boredom is typical of “average” of a teenager. Forgive me for any absolutely off base comments.
Lamya probably opens the door for the rest of the night and day. The growing up it’s hard. What comes up next with adulthood. Perhaps Lamya found on Maryam repetitive dissent and spiraling the ‘I’over and over. The teenager little voice in my head speaks trough immature affirmations such as I ¡ didn’t ask to be born!. The self, it’s conditions. “I”by being plural gave us three different Lamyas. I also think suicidal thoughts are an ongoing conflict. There’s horror, affliction. Scared by the webs. Lamya thinks on agency.
I didn't want to disappear but I often wished to be dumb and beautiful instead of really smart.
Yes, I absolutely had the desire to disappear as a teenager. I think it came from a feeling of humiliation of being alive - a realization that the person I was and the person I wanted to be were so far apart that the gap between the two felt insurmountable.
I would spend many hours of my mid-teens contemplating ways to disappear myself, specifically trying to identify ways that wouldn't bring shame on my parents or traumatize my sibling. Of course, that was impossible. I couldn't identify one, so instead I was paralysed by this inertia for several years and the memory of the pull of that darkness still haunts me today.
Lamya's experience certainly brought it all back, but in a way that I'm glad to be confronted with as an adult, so I can make sense of it. I wasn't out as queer yet, not to myself or anyone else, but I had certainly had experienced same sex attracctioon for at least a decade. I wonder if that suppression of identity and internalized shame was partly to blame for my misery. It is logical for that to be the source of my dissonance. I just felt so completely misunderstood and alone.
I do remember wishing for something to happen in my life so that I could explain the feeling of not wanting to exist, something tangible so that I at least had a reason for feeling that way. Then when I was 17, my dad was diagnosed as terminally ill with less than a year left to live. I snapped out of it and never let myself get caught in that place again. I hadn't known yet what death was, and once I was aware of the permanency of it, and the grief it left, I understood it was not something to consider anymore.