BPL Book Prize Book Club: Hijab Butch Blues

In honor of the 10-year anniversary of the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize, we are celebrating all year-long with book clubs featuring past winners. This meeting, we will be discussing 2023 nonfiction winner Hijab Butch Blues: A Memoir 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. Born in South Asia, she moved to the Middle East at a young age and has spent years feeling out of place, 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: When Maryam learned that she was pregnant, she insisted no man had touched her. Could Maryam, uninterested in men, be . . . like Lamya.

This searingly intimate memoir in essays, spanning Lamya’s childhood to her arrival in the United States for college through early-adult life in New York City, tells a universal story of courage, trust, and love, celebrating what it means to be a seeker and an architect of one’s own life.

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2023 BPL BOOK PRIZE WINNER: NONFICTION

You can place your copy on hold here, and don't forget to check out our Bklyn Book Club Kit featuring discussion questions, readalikes, and LGBTQ+ resource guides!