The Audacious Book Club: Hijab Butch Blues

On this month's selection.

When Leslie Feinberg published Stone Butch Blues in 1993, it was considered one of the finest novels ever written about the complexities of both the lesbian experience and the transgender experience. Feinberg, who described hirself as "an anti-racist white, working-class, secular Jewish, transgender, lesbian, female, revolutionary communist” called the novel one “that defies easy classification” and is “a call to action.” Stone Butch Blues was incredibly important to me as a young queer person and it is still a foundational text for me today. There was so much I identified with even though the character Feinberg wrote was quite different from me. What I most connected with was the sense of loneliness and isolation, craving belonging, trying to understand where I fit in the world when I was so different from most of the people in my life. 

Twenty years after the publication of Feinberg’s novel, Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H, is a memoir that invites us to explore the life of a queer Muslim woman. This beautiful, exquisitely written memoir is as revolutionary now in its vulnerability, honesty, and as the gender explorations in Stone Butch Blues were in 1993. 

Hijab Butch Blues begins with a quote from the Quran and the author’s admission that, like Ibrahim, she has questions for God. She writes, “Like Ibrahim, I, too, can’t help but turn to God with my questions, my doubts, my anger, my love.” Lamya’s memoir deftly navigates  between important stories from the  Quran and parallels in Lamya’s own life. In the midst of nuanced ruminations on Maryam’s partnerless pregnancy and Allah’s nonbinary identity, Lamya comes out; she falls for her economics teacher; she pines after straight women; she goes on bad dates. As she contemplates these connections between her explorations of gender and sexual identity and her religion, she comes of age, moves from the Middle East to America, and begins to establish herself as an adult, after college and graduate school,  in New York. 

Feinberg died in 2014 just before the publication of the 20th anniversary of hir novel; in the anniversary edition Author’s Note, Feinberg pointed out that hir novel “planted a flag,” but acknowledged the work was not done. “The last chapter of this saga of struggle has not yet been written,” Feinberg wrote. Lamya H’s memoir takes up a measure of Feinberg’s revolutionary work, work that is particularly vital now as women around the world take up their own, urgent revolutions. Women in Iran, for example, are putting their lives on the line to protest Jina “Mahsa” Amini’s murder and the misogynistic rule of clerical authorities. 

Hijab Butch Blues is a challenging and deeply satisfying and enlightening read. I’m looking forward to discussing this memoir with you throughout March. Look for our first discussion thread later this week, with much more to follow.  Our discussion with Lamya will take place on March 30th at 8 pm EST/5 pm PST. You can register now.