Binaries be damned: What if God is genderless? What if God is trans?

In the brand new memoir Hijab Butch Blues, Lamya H takes what Leslie Feinberg began in 1993 with Stone Butch Blues — a fancy depiction of gender and labor politics in Seventies-era America — and makes it true and holy. To Lamya, God is not a person or a lady. “My God,” they write, “transcends gender.”

Lamya, a bored 14-year-old “nerd” who “never skips Quran class,” needs to die. At the age of 4, her dad and mom had dragged her from her unknown, Urdu-speaking nation of origin to dwell in a “rich Arab country,” “in a “massive metropolitan metropolis” located “away from every part and everybody we knew.” She’s stuck in a system of “unstated racial hierarchies.” She becomes fascinated by her female economics teacher: “A hyperawareness of her coordinates always, like there is a lengthy invisible string connecting us.” She realizes she’s gay — though she doesn’t have the language for it yet.

The author’s new identity seems to conflict with their faith, until deeper reads of stories from the Quran educate them and readers on Islam in an avant-garde way. Their curiosity keeps them alive. At 17, Lamya earns a scholarship and moves to the U.S. to pursue their education at an unnamed “prestigious faculty.” A few years later, though, when they apply for a special visa extension, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services mistakenly sends their official mail to an old address. Lamya receives it too late, and they have to make a life altering decision: leave the country or fight for the new life they’re building for themself.

Hijab Butch Blues is organized in three components. The first one is all about Lamya’s childhood and gender questioning. When Lamya tells her mom she’ll by no means marry a person, her mom responds: “How will you live…? Who will take care of you?” Lamya’s undecided. Readers get the CliffsNotes on Maryam, the East’s “Virgin Mary,” and Lamya sees the story with recent eyes: “Did Maryam say that no man has touched her because she didn’t like men?” Her instructor says no, however Lamya resists: “Isn’t it obvious? Doesn’t it make sense?… Maryam is a dyke.”

In the second half, Lamya challenges the “authentically gay experience,” e.g. popping out to your dad and mom, frequenting lesbian bars, and explicitly defining your sexuality to others in an effort to be “legible.” These aim posts aren’t needed, Lamya argues: Coming out to their dad and mom “doesn’t make sense.” They “live across an ocean in a country where queerness… isn’t an identity…” According to Lamya, all you must be homosexual are your individual “gay enough” actions. For them, that is “dosas every Thursday evening; watching the soccer world cup and picking which teams to cheer on based on anti-imperialism…”

They present readers how harrowing it’s to navigate life within the U.S. of their “brown hijabi Muslim body,” which is “seen as scary, disempowered, both hypervisible and invisible at the same time.” Lamya learns to hold photocopies of their papers always. When their time in graduate faculty is nearing an finish, 11 years have handed since they first arrived within the U.S. They’ve renewed their scholar visa 4 occasions: “Four times filling out extensive paperwork, four airplane trips to the one U.S. consulate in the country where my parents live… Four times being asked questions designed to trip me up: Can you tell me your parents’ birthdays again? Have you ever been rejected for a visa before? You’re not one of the ones we have to worry about, ha-ha-ha, right?” Lamya’s life within the U.S. might finish in a flash because of one bureaucratic blip.

The third and last a part of the ebook is all about Lamya’s internalized homophobia and their popping out. “Dating queer women will make my gayness real in ways it isn’t when I’m crushing on straight girls,” they notice. Several unhealthy dates later, Lamya finds somebody they need to maintain seeing. At the identical time, they buckle down on their religion and begin a research group, discovering new that means in a number of the Quran’s “hardest verses to reconcile”: those which, in keeping with typical interpretations, condone “intimate partner violence” and unjust inheritance legal guidelines for males versus ladies, and condemn homosexuality: “What if Allah wants us to extrapolate gender inequality to class inequality,” Lamya wonders, “… wants us to redistribute wealth?”

Hijab Butch Blues is greater than a must-read. It’s additionally a research information on Islam, a handbook for abolitionists, and a queer manifesto. It evokes important pondering, upholds activist self-care, and permits the defining of 1’s personal queerness. Good vs. unhealthy Muslim, straight vs. homosexual: That’s all a lure. There are third choices, too. By the top of it, readers will see queerness — theirs, others’, and the idea –“for what it is: a miracle.”

Ashlee Green (she/they) is a author and editor dwelling in Washington, D.C. Green is former managing editor of The Northside Chronicle; their work exploring gender and sexuality, energy buildings, private freedom, and psychological well being has been revealed in HuffPost and The Rumpus. Find them on Twitter at @ashleegreenbean