 | |
| Author | Lamya H. |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Memoir |
| Publisher | Dial Press |
Publication date | February 6, 2023 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Pages | 336 |
| ISBN | 978-0-593-44878-6 |
Hijab Butch Blues is a 2023 memoir by pseudonymous author Lamya H, published by Dial Press. [1]
The memoir's title is a reference to Stone Butch Blues , Leslie Feinberg's 1993 novel. [2]
Lamya H. was born in an Urdu-speaking country. At age four, she and her parents moved to a metropolitan city in a "rich Arab country". At age 14, she realized she was gay after connecting to the story of Maryam in Surah Maryam of the Qur'an. She moved to the U.S. at age 17 after receiving a scholarship to a "prestigious college" in New York City. [3] [4]
She began writing the essays that comprise the memoir in her 20s. [1]
Lamya describes herself as gender non-conforming, queer, and non-binary. [5] She uses she/they pronouns. [4]
The memoir is split into three parts. Throughout the book, Lamya connects her own experiences to stories and figures from the Qur'an. [3]
The first part explores Lamya's childhood and early experiences with gender. In the second part, Lamya discusses and challenges the idea of the "authentically gay experience," dismissing the idea that a person needs to come out to one's parents or family to be considered "gay enough". She also discusses the activities she engages in as part of her LGBT identity, such as "dosas every Thursday evening; watching the soccer world cup and picking which teams to cheer on based on anti-imperialism..." [3]
In the final part of the memoir, Lamya discusses her internalized homophobia, relationship to Islam, and decision to come out. [3]
Hijab Butch Blues received positive reviews from Autostraddle , [6] Muslim Girl , [4] NPR, [3] The Skinny , [7] Them, [8] and Xtra Magazine . [9]
The memoir won the Brooklyn Public Library's Nonfiction Prize for 2023. [10] It was also a finalist for the 36th Lambda Literary Awards, in the category of Lesbian Memoir or Biography. [11]
Butch and femme are masculine (butch) or feminine (femme) identities in the lesbian subculture that have associated traits, behaviors, styles, self-perception, and so on. This concept has been called a "way to organize sexual relationships and gender and sexual identity". Butch–femme culture is not the sole form of a lesbian dyadic system, as there are many women in butch–butch and femme–femme relationships.
Leslie Feinberg was an American butch lesbian, transgender activist, communist, and author. Feinberg authored Stone Butch Blues in 1993. Her writing, notably Stone Butch Blues and her pioneering non-fiction book Transgender Warriors (1996), laid the groundwork for much of the terminology and awareness around gender studies and was instrumental in bringing these issues to a more mainstream audience.
Jenni Olson is a writer, archivist, historian, consultant, and non-fiction filmmaker based in Berkeley, California. She co-founded the pioneering LGBT website PlanetOut.com. Her two feature-length essay films — The Joy of Life (2005) and The Royal Road (2015) — premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Her work as an experimental filmmaker and her expansive personal collection of LGBTQ film prints and memorabilia were acquired in April 2020 by the Harvard Film Archive, and her reflection on the last 30 years of LGBT film history was published as a chapter in The Oxford Handbook of Queer Cinema from Oxford University Press in 2021. In 2020, she was named to the Out Magazine Out 100 list. In 2021, she was recognized with the prestigious Special TEDDY Award at the Berlin Film Festival. She also campaigned to have a barrier erected on the Golden Gate Bridge to prevent suicides.
Emanuel Xavier, is an American poet, spoken word artist, author, editor, screenwriter, and LGBTQ activist born and raised in the Bushwick area of Brooklyn. Associated with the East Village, Manhattan arts scene in New York City, he emerged from the ball culture scene to become one of the first openly gay poets from the Nuyorican movement as a successful writer and advocate for gay youth programs and Latino gay literature.
Stone Butch Blues is an autobiographical novel by Leslie Feinberg. Written from the perspective of stone butch lesbian Jess Goldberg, it intimately details her life in the last half of the 20th century in New York.
Joan Nestle is a Lambda Award winning writer and editor and a founder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives, which holds, among other things, everything she has ever written. She is openly lesbian and sees her work of archiving history as critical to her identity as "a woman, as a lesbian, and as a Jew."
Minnie Bruce Pratt was an American poet, educator, activist, and essayist. She retired in 2015 from her position as Professor of Writing and Women's Studies at Syracuse University where she was invited to help develop the university's first LGBT studies program.
Vivek Shraya is a Canadian musician, writer, and visual artist. She is a seven-time Lambda Literary Award finalist and is considered a Great Canadian Filmmaker of the Future by CBC Arts.
Elisha Lim is a scholar, artist and graphic novelist living in Toronto. Lim advocates the use of the gender-neutral pronoun "they". Lim is currently an assistant professor at York University, in the faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies. Their research focuses on social media, theology, and critical race theory.
Amber Dawn is a Canadian writer, who won the 2012 Dayne Ogilvie Prize, presented by the Writers' Trust of Canada to an emerging lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender writer.
Jeanne Córdova was an American writer and supporter of the lesbian and gay rights movement, founder of The Lesbian Tide, and a founder of the West Coast LGBT movement. A former Catholic nun, Córdova was a second-wave feminist lesbian activist and self-described butch.
Transgender studies, also called trans studies or trans* studies, is an interdisciplinary field of academic research dedicated to the study of gender identity, gender expression, and gender embodiment, as well as to the study of various issues of relevance to transgender and gender variant populations. Interdisciplinary subfields of transgender studies include applied transgender studies, transgender history, transgender literature, transgender media studies, transgender anthropology and archaeology, transgender psychology, and transgender health. The research theories within transgender studies focus on cultural presentations, political movements, social organizations and the lived experience of various forms of gender nonconformity. The discipline emerged in the early 1990s in close connection to queer theory. Non-transgender-identified peoples are often also included under the "trans" umbrella for transgender studies, such as intersex people, crossdressers, drag artists, third gender individuals, and genderqueer people.
Cristina Carrera, otherwise known as Cristy C. Road is a Cuban-American illustrator, graphic novelist, and punk rock musician whose posters, music, and autobiographical works explore themes of feminism, queer culture, and social justice. She primarily works as an illustrator and graphic novelist, but also published a long-running zine about punk music and her life as a queer Latina. She performed on the Sister Spit roadshow in 2007, 2009, and 2013 and was the lead vocalist and guitarist for the queercore/pop-punk band, The Homewreckers. She currently sings vocals and plays guitar in Choked Up. She has published three books and one collection of postcards, as well as numerous concert posters, protest flyers, book covers, and logos. Road has worked as a professor at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University.
Nancy K. Bereano is an American editor and publisher. She founded Firebrand Books, an influential lesbian feminist press, in 1984 and ran it until her retirement in 2000.
The Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir/Biography is an annual literary award established in 1994, presented by the Lambda Literary Foundation, to a memoir, biography, autobiography, or works of creative nonfiction by or about lesbians. Works published posthumously and/or written with co-authors are eligible, but anthologies are not.
The Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir/Biography is an annual literary award, presented by the Lambda Literary Foundation, to a memoir, biography, autobiography, or works of creative nonfiction by or about gay men. Works published posthumously and/or written with co-authors are eligible, but anthologies are not.
The Lambda Literary Award for Nonfiction is an annual literary award, presented by the Lambda Literary Foundation, that awards LGBT-themed nonfiction books whose intended audience is "general readers, as opposed to those targeted primarily to scholarly audiences." Anthologies and memoirs are not included as they have their own categories.
Julie Marie Wade is an American writer and professor of creative writing. Wade has received numerous awards for her writing, most notably winning the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir or Biography in 2011 for her book Wishbone.
Putsata Reang is a Cambodian-American journalist and author.