Hijab Butch Blues

By: Lamya H When fourteen-year-old Lamya H realizes she has a crush on her teacher - her female teacher- she covers up her attraction, an attraction she can’t yet name, by playing up her roles as overachiever and class clown. She’s spent her childhood in the Middle East feeling like her own desires and dreams don’t matter, and it’s easier to hide in plain sight. To disappear. But one day in Quran class, she reads a passage about Maryam that changes everything. Lamya learns that Maryam was untempted by an angelically handsome man, and that later, when told she is pregnant, Maryam insists no man has touched her. Could Maryam, uninterested in men, be…like Lamya?From that moment on, Lamya makes sense of her struggles and triumphs by comparing her experiences with some of the most famous stories in the Quran. She juxtaposes her coming out with Musa liberating his people from the pharoah; asks if Allah, who is neither male nor female, might instead be nonbinary; and, drawing on the faith and