Common Reading 24-25: "Hijab Butch Blues"

About This Guide

The UO Common Reading Program brings our community together through a shared reading experience. This year's book selection is the coming-of-age memoir, Hijab Butch Blues.  

In this guide, you will find information about the book and its author as well as sources you go to to dive deeper and learn more. Topics covered include: 

• Get Started with the UO Common Reading: Learn about this year's book selection and author, and find out more about how to get a copy for free.  
• Interviews and Reviews: Read reviews of the book, and hear from the author, Lamya H.
• Exploring Related Texts and Contexts: Find related reading, information about the Quran (a text referenced throughout the memoir), and do contextual research that will help to illuminate themes.  

About the Book

Hijab Butch Blues is a memoir in which I reconceive stories from the Quran as queer brown immigrant narratives in order to better understand my own queer brown immigrant life.  

-  Lamya H., Hijab Butch Blues Book Club Guide

Awards & Honors

• ​​Stonewall Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award Winner
• Lambda Literary Awards Finalist
• Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize Winner
• Them's Now Award honoree in Literature
• An Audacious Book Club selection
• Best Book of the Year: NPR, Autostraddle, Book Riot, BookPage, Harper’s Bazaar, Electric Lit, She Reads

Want to Learn More?

• Learn about why Hijab Butch Blues is UO's 2024-2025 Common reading selection in Oregon News.   
• Read about the book on the publisher's website.  

About the Author

I felt that to write this books honestly and in a way that was vulnerable, I had to write it anonymously. It was really important to me to not be googleable, and maintain a degree of privacy and safety. I know those are such loaded terms, and call to mind things that I'm actually fighting against, so it felt complicated. But I haven't regretted the decision at all, because in order for me to be able to talk freely, and to be able to critique both hegemonic queerness and hegemonic Islam, I had to do that anonymously. 

-  Lamya H., Interview with Roxane Gay for the Audacious Book Club, March 30, 2023

Hijab Butch Blues was published anonymously by Lamya H (she/they), a queer Muslim writer and organizer who lives in New York City.  Lamya has received fellowships from Lambda Literary, Apsen Words, and Queer|Arts and has published many essays in addition to her memoir. Want to know more? Visit: lamyah.com or follow Lamya @lamyaisangry on X or Instagram.