Bk Theme: Gender
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Arabo-Islamic Texts on Female Homosexuality
Increasingly in mainstream discourse and rhetoric, there only seems to be one very serious and conservative face to Islam, Muslim communities, and their governments. Mainstream modern Islamic hermeneutics condemn homosexual orientations, sometimes with punishments as severe as death. Nevertheless, there were also instances in Muslim history, culture, and society where religiosity was playful not punitive,…
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Hijab Butch Blues
A queer hijabi Muslim immigrant survives her coming-of-age by drawing strength and hope from stories in the Quran in this daring, provocative, and radically hopeful memoir.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…
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Woman at Point Zero
From her prison cell, Firdaus, sentenced to die for having killed a pimp in a Cairo street, tells of her life from village childhood to city prostitute. Society’s retribution for her act of defiance – death – she welcomes as the only way she can finally be free.
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The Magic My Body Becomes
Winner, 2017 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize In the magic my body becomes, Jess Rizkallah seeks a vernacular for the inescapable middle ground of being Arab American–a space that she finds, at times, to be too Arab for America and too American for her Lebanese elders. These poems freely assert gender, sexuality, and religious beliefs while at…
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Homosexuality in Islam: Critical Reflection on Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims
Homosexuality is anathema to Islam – or so the majority of both believers and non-believers suppose. Throughout the Muslim world, it is met with hostility, where state punishments range from hefty fines to the death penalty. Likewise, numerous scholars and commentators maintain that the Qur’an and Hadith rule unambiguously against same-sex relations. This pioneering study…
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Queer Beirut
Gender and sexual identity formation is an ongoing anthropological conversation in both Middle Eastern studies and urban studies, but the story of gay and lesbian identity in the Middle East is only just beginning to be told. Queer Beirut is the first ethnographic study of queer lives in the Arab Middle East. Drawing on anthropology,…
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Behind You is the Sea
An exciting debut novel that gives voice to the diverse residents of a Palestinian American community in Baltimore—from young activists in conflict with their traditional parents to the poor who clean for the rich—lives which intersect across divides of class, generation, and religion. Funny and touching, Behind You Is the Sea brings us into the homes and lives…
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Man o’ War
An achingly honest and frequently hilarious coming-of-age novel about an Arab American trans teen fighting to keep their head above water in a landlocked Midwestern town.Man o’ wars are not jellyfish, and River McIntyre is not happy. River doesn’t know why they’re unhappy—though perhaps it has something to do with the way they relate more…
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