I went into this book not knowing what to expect, and I came out of it feeling like I had just looked into my own soul. Hijab Butch Blues is simply incredible. This memoir on faith and queerness touched parts of my soul few people I know will ever reach.

I can’t properly articulate my thoughts about HBB, but I’ll try:

Lamya H.’s memoir is vulnerable, authentic, brave, relatable, queer. It’s about reclaiming your faith, it’s about making your own community when no one will accept you. The entire structure of the memoir, drawing parallels from the Quran to the author’s experiences, shows such deep knowledge and love of the author towards their religion that, as a reader, one cannot help but be moved. I may come from a different religious background, but I knew a lot of the stories she told, and our religious communities often share similar beliefs (especially towards queerness), so her interpretations and questions truly made me interrogate what religion had taught me.

Her experiences with discovering her queerness within a unaccepting community, being afraid of using words to describe her feelings because they would make them tangible, not being able to say “yes” out loud to being asked if she is sapphic so instead simply nodding, not being able to be “authentically queer” (whatever that’s supposed to mean), never really belonging for one reason or another — all these things I have been through, and reading someone else’s account of it made me cry multiples times. I felt deeply connected to Lamya in a way only people who have felt the same can.

Even the way they write, their style, is perfect for what the memoir was telling us: simple, sometimes blunt, often humorous, though also knowing when to be serious, and finally true and authentic. It didn’t feel like I was reading a book, it felt like I was listening to them tell their story.

This memoir simply felt like a hug and I cannot recommend it enough. Follow @beezus’ advice and read it even if you haven’t read Stone Butch Blues yet. Please, read it!