The University of Connecticut’s Creative Writing Program had another installation of their Visiting Authors Series starring the author of “Hijab Butch Blues,” Lamya H., and a featuring creative non-fiction writer, Miranda Argyros, on March 6. Both writers read excerpts of their literature for the online audience with American Sign Language interpreters.
Associate Professor in Residence of the English department and Director of the Creative Writing Program Sean Frederick Forbes began the talk by thanking the audience for attending.
Forbes talked about a creative nonfiction contest that Argyros won. Argyros is a graduate student in the English department and an instructor in the first-year writing program. Forbes let Argyros read an excerpt from her nonfiction piece named “Untitled (Red).”
In a gorgeous amount of detail, Argyros detailed her experiences talking to a potential love interest who she may be ambivalent about. Her love interest likes red, so Argyros focused on that color in her piece.
It was easy to get lost in the world Argyros created, where it could feel black and white with red accents. Striking lines include “As though an artist’s work is to calcify” and “As though art is a memoir” for how artists preserve history, emotions and thought in their work. Forbes described the work as “sensual.”
After thanking Argyros for reading her excerpt, Forbes introduced H. to the audience. Her book about growing up and living as a queer and non-binary Brown Muslim person, “Hijab Butch Blues,” won the Stonewall Israel Fishman Non-fiction Award and Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and the Publishing Triangle Award. H. wishes for her book to affirm “A dignity of life for everyone.”
The first excerpt recounted the story of H. in a class about the Quran, and specifically focused on the story of Maryam (also known as the Virgin Mary), and the impact it had on H.
“I’m filled with an existential need to disappear,” H. said.
H. didn’t liken it to depression necessarily, but the feeling was still there. She remembered how Maryam tells God she wanted to die, which was shocking but also liberating to H. Maryam also said, “How can I have a baby when a man never touched me?” to which H. responded in class “Because she didn’t like men?”
The class laughed and H. played it off as being the class clown, but she was genuine with her question. “Are there other women who don’t like men?” H. wondered. “Maryam is a dyke.” she boldly claimed.
“There are other women who are like me in the Qu’ran,” H. realized.
After the first excerpt, H. took a moment to add some political commentary on top of the readings since she wanted her work to be both personal and political. “It feels very important right now to celebrate queer and trans joy,” H. said. She noted the current American administration, but also didn’t forget the past administrations’ enabling of genocide, Islamophobia and anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and legislation among other topics as well.
The second excerpt was about a queer Muslim space that H. felt at home at. She saw a prayer without segregation by sex, which, like Maryam’s story, offered her a new perspective on her intersectional identity.
Someone in a plaid shirt, curly hair on the top of their head and buzzcut sides went into the space, to which H. silently noted to herself that they had “So much butch swagger.” The person who came in was super welcoming to H. and became her queer Muslim mentor. “I feel like I’ve always been looking for a place like this,” she said.
There was then a Q&A section with H.
“You chose to write this memoir anonymously,” said Forbes, he then asked why.
“The NYPD has been spying on Muslim students,” H. said. She added how important it was for her identity to be anonymous despite missed opportunities in publishing due to it. She doesn’t allow any pictures of her or personal addresses to be publicly available. Humorously, H. had a friend recommend her own book to her.
H. acknowledged that Leslie Feinberg’s “Stone Butch Blues” inspired her own memoir in both title and contents. “I read every queer writer I could,” H. said.
She cited Black feminist, activist and writer Audre Lorde, Dorothy Allison, the author of “Bastard Out of Carolina,” and Canadian writer and poet laureate Dionne Brand as influences.
H. said that queerness and Islam aren’t oppositional to each other. Her queerness is influenced by Islam and her Islam is inspired by queerness.
When asked how young writers who are finding their voices improve, H. said she got her start writing in her early 20s out of rage. She noted how popular online-published essays were in the 2010s, saying she contributed to that movement herself.
“Read everything you can get your hands on,” H. said. She added that “People need to be asked hard questions.”
When talking about communities not wanting criticism because they can’t exist comfortably as a social group with it, H. said, “Not airing dirty laundry doesn’t make it clean.”