ALT Screenshot from the New York Times website. Text reads: Book: ‘Hijab Butch Blues’ In a memoir as funny as it is original, Lamya H uses stories from the Quran to illuminate life as a queer Muslim. Readers see what it’s like to be a bored 14-year-old who can’t wait to get to Quran class, an immigrant in America with a brown body and a hijab, and a woman in love in a world where being gay seems impossible.

ALT Writing on the page reads: “This man leaves his child and a nursing mother in the middle of the desert, and turns to the heavens and prays to God. In the story that gets told, this man is extolled for praying to God and trusting in God. But what of Hajra’s incredibly trust in God? The Hajar of my imagination, who chooses to stay. Who makes an active choice not to run after Ibrahim, not to follow him back home, not to wail and scream? Chooses instead to stay, alone in the middle of the desert with a nursing baby and dry breasts, no food, no water, nothing for miles. Chooses to stay not for a man but for God. Hajar, wholly trusting the Divine, with a patience and grace that I cannot summon when I hear this story in sermons, in Quran class, in lectures where this story is told. Where the story of Hajar, who chooses to sacrifice her home, her child, her life - for God and God’s plan - is not told.”