Hijab Butch Blues

A conversation with the author Lamya H.

What if the Virgin Maryam became pregnant because of a man who wouldn’t take no for an answer? What if Maryam never wanted to be with a man, not because that is how to be a woman the right way, but because Maryam was a dyke?

Maryam was the first Muslim dyke. Or at least she was in Lamya H’s interpretation of the Quran in Hijab Butch Blues, their memoir. Maryam, for those who don’t know, is the only woman named in the Quran. 

While the memoir by author Lamya H is inherently about being a queer Muslim, it is about so much more. It’s about the intersections that occupy queerness. It’s about legible queerness. It’s queerness as class struggle, as gender inequality, as xenophobia. It’s about being a hijab-wearing Muslim among other Muslims, being queer among Muslims, and Muslim among queers. 

The question, how can you be both queer and Muslim at the same time? is the assumption that we must enact our queerness in a Western way — that queer Muslims are not legitimate. We can be queer and Muslim at the same time. Being Middle Eastern, being Muslim, wearing a hijab, class, being in the U.S. and being associated with womanhood all occupy our queerness. 

Lamya H’s face is nowhere, real name unknown, and they only ever say they are from a Muslim country. Reading Hijab Butch Blues felt like a homecoming. After I read Hijab Butch Blues, I put the book down, put my head in my hands, and cried. 

I felt like I was having a conversation that I've never had and always needed to have. Having the opportunity to talk with them about their memoir was all the more energizing and confirming. 

- Aryana Goodarzi, Dyke Queen Associate Editor

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Aryana: In your memoir, you write about how you sought out queer Muslim groups when you first moved to New York City. I'm queer, Iranian, and culturally Muslim and never thought to seek out queer Iranian community because I didn't know there was one. I was struck by how you knew inherently that you needed queer, Muslim community to survive here. How did you come to that conclusion — that you knew there were others and you needed queer Muslim community?

Lamya H: I think that moment of finding community is so powerful, especially with people who may not have the exact same experiences as you, but have identities that are similar, or at least sort of just understand where you're coming from, and you don't have to explain things to. That was one of the most life changing things. And for me, in some ways, I feel like it was only possible because of New York. New York is such a special place in that way. I feel like for me just like walking into a room and meeting other queer Muslims was such a big part of learning to be a person in the world. 

A: You talk about how among straight people/Muslims you’re not like other/most queers, among queer people you’re not like other/most Muslims. And how you are a hijab-wearing Muslim among Muslims and maybe not as feminist? How among Muslims/Western people who don’t think you can be both, your butchness is read as modesty and hijab is read within the gender binary. 

You write, “To them, my hijab, my butch outfits of baggy jeans and flannel shirts, read as modest; my short hair reads as convenience; and my rants about men pass as angry feminism. When it comes to my family, my hijab is my beard.” 

As someone who’s both, I would read your hijab and butch clothes as you being a queer Muslim. Can you talk more about this? How has being read like this actually helped you sometimes?

LH: That's such a good layered question. I mean, so it's interesting, because for one, I've always been really genderqueer, even as a kid. For a really long time, I didn't think I could call myself non-binary, because I wear hijab, and hijab is seen as this very particular feminizing thing. But then, the more that I thought about it, and the more that I was in sort of like spaces with other non-binary folks and other people sort of really living in like gender expansive ways, I was like, fuck that. Like why are we sort of like projecting gender onto the way that someone chooses to dress? Isn't that like, exactly what cis people do? And I think my hijab takes different forms based on the day. Sometimes it's a scarf, it's like a headscarf. And sometimes it's a beanie. And sometimes it's a baseball cap. And so I think playing with that has been really sort of gender affirming. 

It's interesting, because you're right, depending on the space that I am in, there's certain ways that I'm read and that I'm not read. And I think some of the ways in which people don't read cues, like in straight spaces, for example, at my mosque, that's actually such a complicated feeling, because on one hand, it means that I can be at my mosque, and I can pray alongside people. And I can really have that sense of Muslim community, which to me is really important in terms of a marginalized identity in the US. 

But then, on the other hand, it feels like there are parts of me that are just not seen, so that there's something very sad about that, too. But what's really interesting is that even in Muslim spaces, sometimes I feel like I get a look of recognition. And so that is really special too. And then what's been really interesting is also carving out alternative spaces from that. Going to places like the mosque, like sort of straight mainstream mosques has a very particular place in my life. But then there are also these alternate spaces that I've been able to carve out for myself with other queer Muslims. 

So for example, for a couple of years now, we'll do an Eid prayer—that's a queer Muslim youth prayer. We'll go to a park and we'll pray in non-gender segregated spaces and have a sermon that's less hierarchical and it's less of one person talking. And that's more of a discussion. And so those spaces have also been really meaningful in terms of how I practice my faith. But it's also been really lovely to be able to pass in some ways and go to mainstream spaces as well. It feels like a kind of shapeshifting. The being-read and the being-not-read, allows me to navigate these different spaces.

A: Homophobia in Muslim countries has been used to justify imperialism and Islamophobia. You’re not out to anyone in your home country. Yet Hijab Butch Blues is about how the Quran brought you to your queerness. 

You address how the need to come out to your family is one of the tensions between being gay and enacting your queerness to be legible in a white/Western way. Yet you also aren’t out to them because they might not be OK with it — do you believe that upholds Muslims as homophobic? 

LH: I don't blanketly think that Muslims are homophobic. I do know exposure to different things has different effects on people. So my parents, for example, who live across the ocean, don't know any queer people; they just don't. And so the way that queerness plays out in the U.S. or in the West is very different from how they've experienced it. And so these things don't always translate. I think to me the tensions speak to a need to be generous and have empathy for people who maybe don't read queerness in the same way, or haven't been exposed to certain things. 

To me, it's not that the country where my parents live is just automatically homophobic. And what's really interesting, though, is that, you know, the country where I grew up in the Gulf, the sort of rich Arab country that I grew up in, was super queer. And I think that some of the homosocial behavior hides that queerness. 

But growing up, like in high school and stuff, I knew girls who were dating other girls. And I think, again, it looks so different. I don't know if applying a term as blanket as homophobic is accurate. I think there's a lot of nuance there. And at the end of the day, the tensions beg us to be more nuanced and understanding and loving. When I think of my parents, for example, I keep coming back to this idea of how do I navigate this with love?

A: Sometimes when people find out I'm queer, if they already know I'm Iranian, one of their first questions is, “Oh, my God, do you still talk to your family?” It's like, you're just inherently assuming that in the U.S., there isn't also legislation that is killing people and all of that. Sure, in Iran, it's government officials themselves, with their own hands, killing queer people, whereas in the U.S., they're still killing people. It's just indirectly, if you will, through policy and law. How do you feel about that? When you think about it in the context of the U.S., and then where you grew up? If there even are laws like that.

LH: That's a great question. I also think of the resilience of queer communities a lot. Both outside the U.S. and in the U.S.. I mean, I think of the queer community, both in the place that I grew up, and the place that I was born, and the ways in which the cultural production that is coming out is just really beautiful and nuanced. There's a lot of films that are coming out that are beautiful and nuanced. And I think of the violence of the state, and the violence of everyday people also. 

The thing that I keep coming back to is the resilience of queerness. And the fact that it's everywhere and people are going to try to erase it, but it's just unable to be erased. I think about that a lot. The ways in which people are so brave and beautiful, and are carving out these lives for themselves, even under really terrible situations. And the really brilliant and beautiful organizing that we're gonna see come out of it.

A: In your book, you write about how Maryam showed you you could be gay/are gay, but you didn’t come into your queerness in a more real way, as you say, until you were around 30 years old. Did being Muslim prolong you coming into your queerness in any way or did  your queerness disable you from feeling as Muslim as others? 

LH: I think for me, it was mostly the one very prescriptive way to be queer. I spent a lot of my early 20s just hearing stories that were very mainstream. In terms of queerness, that was very much like, “Oh, the only way to be queer is, you have to come out to your parents in some big declaration. And you go to gay bars. And that's how you meet people.”

And just that this is the only way to be gay. I think it took a while for me to come into how I wanted to be gay and also in terms of being Muslim, I think that there are very prescriptive ways to be Muslim. And it took me a while to be like, ‘No, this is how I want to live my Islam.’ This is the kind of Islam that is important to me. These are the things that I want to put effort into. 

For me, it was really a process. I'm such a black and white person. I was a lot like that as a kid. I was super rigid, like there’s good and bad; yes and no. It was really a matter of learning to break that down and realize that there are gradations between them. And the gradations are actually where most of the interesting stuff is happening. So to me, being non-binary is also really euphoric in some senses, because it breaks down those very rigid boxes. And it's like, “No, actually, here's what I'm interested in exploring.” 

This is where there's potential for playing and figuring out things and fun and just being messy and being okay with being messy because mess is actually generative, as opposed to this idea of being in very rigid boxes. So to me, I had to learn how to do that both with queerness and with Muslimness. And, I think a lot about this idea of queer adolescents, where you know, straight people have their adolescence and they figure their shit out. But I definitely think there's a sort of second adolescence [for queer people] where you're just like figuring yourself out. 

A: It's interesting, because a lot of the articles I've been reading about Hijab Butch Blues are like, this is about being queer and Muslim. But then when I read it, I was like, ‘No, it's about life.’ There's classism in there. There's gender inequality; there's xenophobia; there's so much in there. But it's interesting, because it goes to show how a lot of people think about what it means to be queer and Muslim at the same time. 

LH: Yeah, thank you for seeing all of that. I really appreciate that. Such a thoughtful read. That's exactly what I was trying to do. Honestly. With this book, I was trying to be like, it's not just about reconciling with queerness and figuring out a way to be both, or even like answering this question. Like you said, that question my date asked me which is like, “How can you be queer and Muslim at the same time?” But actually, it's about the complicated messiness of living. And how do you do that in a world that's so fucked up? And how do you live in a way that promotes justice?

A: You wrote, “Did Maryam say that no man has touched her because she didn't like men? . . . Isn't it obvious? Doesn't it make sense? . . . Maryam is a dyke.” How do you feel about the word dyke? Do you relate to it, do you call yourself a dyke?

LH: Great question. Fun fact. The book was almost titled Maryam is a Dyke. Which I just love because I thought it was just so unapologetic, and so out there. But the big reason why I decided against that was because I just didn't want straight people saying dyke like that. It's one of those terms that I love actually and I definitely identify with it. Because, again, I just think it's so unapologetic. And so in your face, and there's this way in which it fills up your mouth, you know, like, “Dyke!” 

But, there's this way in which it's also seen as this kind of dirty word. And I love the idea of reclaiming that, but there's so much violence attached to it. I really like the fact that it's been reclaimed. And I like using it for myself. It’s really rooted in a lot of  history of queer activism, but it's not necessarily a word that I would want straight people to say about me.

A: The title of  Hijab Butch Blues is inspired by Stone Butch Blues. Can you talk a bit about what it’s like to relate the experience of a queer white butch elder? How did Stone Butch Blues motivate you to write Hijab Butch Blues? Do you feel like you have queer elders that call to you when you’re writing? Do you bring them along with you, or in regards to Leslie Feinberg do you think you’re in conversation with them? 

LH: What I love about Stone Butch Blues is that it's a book that was so effortlessly intersectional. And it's a book that's so good at writing a personal story that's about the day-to-day life of this protagonist, but that's actually deeply political and is able to zoom out through the day-to-day and write in this way that's not instructional or didactic, but that's actually just effortless about labor, about capitalism, about race, about gender, about sexuality. 

I remember reading that for the first time in my twenties and just being blown away. When I was writing this book, I was also just thinking a lot about queer writing ancestors. Leslie Feinberg, Audre Lorde, whose work just like really, really influenced me. 

This is my effort at trying to do that, at writing a memoir that is told in vignettes, short stories about my life. I want it to speak to bigger things. And so that's what I was trying to do in the book. And to me that really called me. I really use Stone Butch Blues as an inspiration/model for how to write like that.

A: As a queer woman, I can’t go to Iran. Your face is nowhere, and last name is unknown. You only say you are from a Muslim country. Can you talk about how your anonymity says a lot in itself about being queer and Muslim?  Would you not be able to go back if you are found out?

LH: That's a good question. I think so. When I wrote this, and when I started writing, in general, I definitely knew that I wanted to write under a pseudonym. For privacy, and for Googleability. I don't want to be Googled. I don't want my address to be Googleable; I don't want my phone number to be Googleable. And I think there's this way in which I've had to fight this. I've had to fight this notion that I'm doing it because I'm scared of scary Muslims coming after me. 

There's so much more nuance to that. The world is a scary place to live as a queer person, as a Muslim person, separately. And I just keep coming back to the violence that is happening against queer people in the US. All of the slurs that I've been called, walking down the street, when I'm in a beanie or something and read visibly queer. And then also, all of the slurs that had been called for being Muslim and being visibly Muslim. 

It’s really interesting, because when I first pitched this book, the whole anonymity thing was such a hard thing for editors to wrap their heads around, especially when you're writing a memoir. I've had to really learn to have boundaries. I wrote about it in the chapter called “Unis.” It's just definitely something that I've had to learn: having boundaries. It's been interesting to navigate that.  But, yeah, I probably wouldn't be able to go to the country that I grew up in, but I'm not sure about the country where I was born. Those are also just really hard things to navigate. And honestly speaks to another reason for using a pseudonym.

A: What made you write this book? Did you hope to engage with a certain reader (queer, Muslim, etc.)? 

LH:  I really started writing because I would tell the stories all the time. And I would just get really angry at injustice. 

And this one time, my friend was like, “Oh, you know, Lamya, you tell all these stories, but unless you write them down, their rage sort of dissipates, and nothing happens.” It just blew my mind when she said that. I was like “Oh, I should write.” So I started writing. 

I just found it to be such a good outlet for not just putting my rage somewhere, but also thinking through complicated situations.

I wrote a lot of essays at first. And then this one time, I found myself writing one of the chapters in my book, the “Hydra” chapter, which is towards the end. And as I was writing it, and really using the process of writing to disentangle my complicated feelings—that chapter is about going to visit my family with my partner and us pretending to be friends. It wasn’t easy; I was thinking a lot about the story of Hydra. And so I wrote this essay that used Hydra as a lens to really think about my complicated feelings about my visit to my family. 

And so the book came about because I wrote that chapter, and I was like, ‘Oh, wait, there are so many of these other times in which I've thought through something through the lens of a story from the Quran.’ 

There are all of these things that I feel torn about that I could apply this analysis to. And so that's where the book came about. It was one of those things where I wrote harder, and I was like, “Oh, wait, I have so much more of this in me.” In some ways, I've been writing these stories my whole life, because I've been thinking about these characters. My whole life, I've been surrounded by their stories. And I've always been thinking of them as sort of flawed, messy humans who make decisions that I'm like, “Wait, why would you do that?” Or, or who have their own internal lives. 

So that's how the book came about. And then the pandemic happened. And suddenly, I had all this time and space to write, which was really life changing, because I had one of those jobs where I couldn't go into work, and I couldn't work from home. So when the shutdown happened, I was like, “Wow, I finally have the time and space to work on this.”

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Aryana Goodarzi is the Associate Editor of Dyke Queen. Dyke Queen’s third print issue, Recipes from Queerantine, is available here. Follow us on Instagram.

Falling in Love on Zoom

Read an excerpt from Dyke Queen's third issue

The following personal essay, “Falling in Love on Zoom,” by Kamala Puligandla, is an excerpt from Dyke Queen’s third issue, Recipes from Queerantine. Check out our interview about the issue with Autostraddle.

Falling in Love on Zoom by Kamala Puligandla

Zoom can been a wasteland — sterile, dry, aesthetically crude — it doesn’t really compare to say, the night sky lit up by fireworks on a hot summer night or a clearing beneath moss-covered pines at the edge of a coastal cliff. But people give way too much credit to the physical setting of romance, when truly, any setting is a ripe place for deep emotional connection and the projection of inner landscapes — at least, when you are, like me, a slut for love.

So when I tell you that I spent quarantine falling in love on Zoom, what you need to know is my emotional landscape. I spent the entirety of Valentine’s Day 2020 rather unexpectedly taken with the Justin Bieber album Changes. I was arrested by the softness, vulnerability, intimacy, and sureness gently flowing into my ears, track after track. Standing in my shower, the water glittering in the sun that streamed in from the window, his words washed over me. I suddenly understood the kind of love I was seeking and had been failing to generate over the past year, despite the huge effort I’d made. It was a relief. Biebs and I had both grown up, and we weren’t afraid to want something wholesome, cozy — even sappy — to keep us up at night.

That evening, as I lay on my couch, I kept all the lights low in my house to let the red glow of the album’s cover on my Spotify app warm me like the embers of a fire. Do you see how in this context, with the right person, a veritable online take-out window for information could transform into a window to say, a world of beauty and mystique? I’m not saying Zoom is inherently romantic, what I’m saying is that I found quarantine to be incredibly romantic.

*

What do I mean by romantic? Britannica describes the late 18th to mid 19th century movement in Western Europe as emphasizing “a deepened appreciation of the beauties of nature; a general exaltation of the emotion over reason and of the senses over intellect; a turning in upon the self and a heightened examination of human personality and its moods and mental potentialities” as well as “the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary, the transcendental.” 

I mean all of these things. Who among us was not living in a reality defined by the emotional and “irrational”? Who wasn’t looking to the beauty of nature to supply a sense of hope, even while the entire West Coast was on fire? To me, however, romance is most about the swoon. It’s the allowance for the senses to be blown out and the imagination to run wild. It’s as much the exultant crescendo that rises in my chest when a beloved appears out of a blur of strangers, as it is about the still evenings bathed in pink light, silhouettes of palm trees dancing on the horizon, that reveals to me the aching depth of my unquenchable longing — for what, for whom, it really doesn’t matter. Only one person has directly told me that the particular depth of my longing was too much for her, but I presume that other people have caught a glimpse and either doubled down or quietly closed some doors. I live to be moved. And I think it’s safe to say that post-Bieber Valentine’s Day, I’d found a new direction in which I wanted to be flung.

The defining feature of this direction was the desire to consume and be consumed with earnest, mutual hunger. In the song “Come Around Me”, Beibs sings in a commanding croon that falls into a pleading falsetto, “So when you come around me, do me like you miss me, even though you’ve been with me. Let’s not miss out on each other, lets get it in expeditiously.” That was the kind of romance I wanted. Something with urgency. Something where you could ask for a performance and enjoy it for the feelings it provoked, and not be a skeptic about whether or not asking for a performance meant this person actually did or did not mean it. Even in early spring of 2020, before the close, ever-present, daily reminders of death, it was starting to feel like a waste of my life to patiently wait for people to start not missing out on me.

*

The first time I met Sarah was in-person and pre-pandemic. There was some intensity in the way she was staring at me and in her bangs and her marketing lingo and her excitement that we were both half South Asian. The two of us were wearing brightly colored, short-sleeved button-up shirts and all of this made me pause and go, “Who is she?” This was during a job interview, and when I got the job, and signed my contract — laughing hysterically with a friend of mine at the clause about how dating your co-workers was not forbidden, but strongly discouraged, of which my friend said to me knowingly, “Please don’t do that” — I put the question of who Sarah was out of my head.

It stayed that way for many months. But I am an Aries. There are no inklings I have that die inside of me before getting tried out. I don’t remember why Sarah asked me to have a drink on Zoom after work — it was likely that there was something hilarious we needed to discuss, like the ignorantly racist descriptions of people that I was constantly editing out of the erotica series we had co-created. I do recall that our first Zoom drink was in March, right after LA (my home) and Portland (her home) had gone into strict quarantine. I had canceled a trip to the Bay Area and a birthday writing retreat in the desert I’d been looking forward to. “Absence is the opportunity to create space for something new,” I reminded myself in my journal.

During our first drink, which turned into three drinks, we laughed and laughed while examining photos of each other’s families, our younger queer looks, and sharing the latest updates on our romantic endeavors. After that, without thinking much of it, we just began video chatting every single day. We’d begin a call at 8 or 9 in the evening and not stop until 1 or 2 in the morning. It was exhilarating, it was the first gentle movement of my swoon. I always needed to hear another wildly dramatic middle school poem that Sarah had written about a single tear she’d shed at a dance or to learn one more stalkerish manifestation of her teenage obsession with Catherine Zeta-Jones. She always needed to hear another page from my latently gay memoir on a summer I spent in Malaga at seventeen, drinking Malibu con naranja. Sometimes she’d read my tarot and it would be a deep, vulnerable experience, other times we’d go on House Party to play Pictionary and make fun of each other’s bad drawings.

“I would never have time for this in regular life,” Sarah liked to remind me, as she sent me screenshots of her calendar from the previous year. I received these comments as a familiar warning, one I had received so many times from the variety of wary or unavailable women I’d been involved with all of my life. But there was something reassuring, all the same, about the depth of Sarah’s attention when we talked, our matching impatient need to know more, and the casual way she’d let me know, unprompted, when she didn’t think she’d have time to catch up that night.

*

The novel part about getting to know someone new on FaceTime and Zoom, was that I wasn’t meeting Sarah in any public space, where we could show off with impeccable looks or impressive bar choices or by accidentally running into the hip people we knew. It was so often the exact opposite. We were always at home, sometimes in the kitchen, usually in bed, rarely dressed to impress, and there was no reason to perform having a glamorous life — it was quarantine during a global pandemic. It was the opposite of all courtship I have ever known. Instead of gradually earning the trust to be allowed into intimate daily rituals, we began in our pajamas, sitting on our beds, like girls at a sleepover, trying to figure out how to convey our past public social lives, wildly dreaming about bringing each other there some day. There’s so much romance in nostalgically mapping out all the gay places you have ever been before and could have crossed paths, while simultaneously filling the empty unknown future with plans for where you’ll go next.

I took workshops with the poet Juan Felipe Herrera in grad school, and he was always coming up with beautifully strange ways to “derail” us from our intentions, into finding what our poems really wanted to be. Having my dating process “derailed” did reveal a new way for me to be moved by someone. It’s not that I wasn’t bowled over by her beautiful smile and the way she flipped her hair, but it’s not what made me call her. She always wanted to know I everything I felt and why. We dissected the tiny disruptions in our monotony: a visit from the hummingbird Sarah named Miranda, who lived in the tree across from her deck, the trio of ice creams I had just gotten delivered and wanted to try eating as one bite. The swoon I experienced was the surprise sensation that someone I was still getting to know, already treated me with the great care of an established friend, incorporating me into her the personal parts of her life with ease and joy.

*

Not that I’ve ever been good at recognizing when a friendship is glowing with romantic possibility, but I have to say it’s even murkier when your habitual daily rituals become a part of shared routine. It was normal for me to wash the dishes while we chatted and for her to take me with her on the dark walk from her apartment to her building’s laundry room. I think romance thrives on the lacks, on the holes, on missing pieces you have to fill in, on the parts of people you will never fully comprehend. So on the one hand, Zoom was the perfect medium for feeling the limitation, the distance between us while also allowing us into each other’s private sanctuaries. We could deep dive into our past dating lives, how we styled ourselves, what we wanted for our futures — and yet, I didn’t know what the back of her legs looked like. I daydreamed constantly about the mundane, like what it would be like to sit next to Sarah and put my hand on her thigh, which was just as mysterious and titillating as the idea of taking off her clothes.

On the other hand, I was left unsure about what part of our seamless connection was a digital illusion. What parts weren’t quite like I thought they were, and what were the differences between us that were easy to side-step on Zoom? Could we love each other with the same attention when we had in-person relationships again, when we weren’t the only thing in moving in a small frame in front of each other? It didn’t help that nothing felt “real” in any other part of my life. My first novel was supposedly coming out that fall, after years of delays, and I didn’t quite believe it. My job, which had originally been exciting, was less about editing and more about trying not to be undermined by the anxious whims of people. My ex-girlfriend, best known for her spontaneity, had become one of my most trusted and reliable friends. I sometimes talked to a friend of mine, who was unexpectedly falling in love too, and we’d say things like, “It’s so wonderful, but this, in quarantine?” and “I know that things will change” and “All we can do is see how it goes.”

But here’s the thing, when truly everything in the world is tenuous and uncertain, except for your 10pm Zoom date to watch Moana with a hot girl who wants to compare your brown hands and feet to the ones in the movie and giggle and cry and watch the “I Lava You” short at the end, AND THEN leave Zoom on all night in your bed, so you can have a sleepover and wake up together — what could be more certain? If the future was, indeed, a gaping maw, wasn’t I already giving the featureless, undefined cavern a strong piece to decorate around? I was beginning to understand that I was already completely enrobed in a Beiber style love affair. What had emerged from, what was for me, an entirely new way of spending time with someone I had a crush on, was also an entirely new kind of relationship.

*

When Sarah and I finally saw each other in person, I picked her up on a beautiful Saturday at the Burbank airport. I saw her standing at the curb with her giant pink suitcase and her hair looked even more overwhelming than usual. In stark contrast to the explicit sexual scenarios she liked to talk through over the phone, she didn’t want to kiss me. “Umm, I ate a quesadilla at the airport right before I came here,” she said through her mask. So I gave her the car ride home and the tour of my apartment and time in the bathroom to admire my plants and brush her teeth, to get adjusted to the hard reality of who and how we were in physical form together. And then I pressed her shoulders against the wall and promised her it wouldn’t be bad, before I kissed her. It was the softest, most supple kiss of my life. It was soft and supple — like eating a dumpling, biting into a mango, trying a new kind of oyster.

Of course, as much as I loved imagining what it would be like to smell her skin and squeeze onto my couch together, I was floored by Sarah’s presence — how much more vibrant the bougainvillea looked beside her and how vast the ocean felt when we walked on the cliffs above it. “I have to buy your espresso machine for my house so when you come to visit me, you’ll feel at home,” she said on our first morning together. And she did. And I did. Which is to say that the romance of quarantine, for me, is as much about the things that developed in the absences, as the sense I was being shown a whole new way for my desires to come into tangible existence — that my unquenchable want is also a form unrelenting hope.

---

Kamala Puligandla is a writer and editor in LA. She writes autobiographical fiction and essays on queer love and futures. Kamala is currently the Communications and Marketing Director at the Feminist Center for Creative Work, and is well-known for her contagious laughter, her iconic hairstyle and her easily undone heart. Her first novel, Zigzags, came out from Not A Cult in October 2020 and You Can Vibe Me On My FemmePhone is her second book.⁠

Dyke Queen's New Issue is Here

Recipes from Queerantine

We’re so excited to announce that Dyke Queen’s third issue, Recipes from Queerantine, is out now!

Issue 03 - Recipes from Queerantine was born during the pandemic. Knowing that the pandemic induced feelings of loneliness and deep isolation, we wanted to explore how queer people coped during this challenging time. We asked our contributors to submit a “recipe” that brought them comfort during quarantine. 

The recipes are not all “traditional” recipes—they’re “recipes” for finding joy in healing, for transporting yourself to another place, for opening your heart up to love, even in the time of COVID. 

RECIPES FROM QUEERANTINE plays with the idea of recipe-making. Queerness is about the process of making ourselves—we make chosen families; we create our identities outside of heteronormativity; and we imagine new ways of loving ourselves and the world around us.

Issue 03 - Recipes from Queerantine features:

• J Wortham, the New York Times Magazine writer and co-host of the Still Processing podcast, wrote a birthday meditation as an offering to a friend who was celebrating their birthday during the pandemic. 

• Renowned photographer Naima Green's gorgeous images —"juicy fruit" and "Soaking"—christen the front and back covers of Dyke Queen. 

• Kamala Puligandla, the novelist and former editor-in-chief of Autostraddle, authored a poignant, touching essay about how she fell in love with her partner over Zoom. 

• Given the inability to gather with friends in community during quarantine, Alexandra DiPalma and Kenya Denise, the co-founders of Domino Sound, the queer, disabled Black woman-owned production studio, inspire readers to travel to otherworldly places with a sip of their shroom tea recipe. 

• Bridget Ore, the designer and illustrator, draws up a beautiful, intimate portrayal of 24 hours in quarantine.

• Koa Beck, the former editor-in-chief of Jezebel and the author of White Feminism, bookends the issue with a comforting, rich recipe for cinnamon and chocolate vegan scones. 

***Along with our new issue, we released a limited-edition run of a t-shirt, featuring illustrations inspired by Recipes from Queerantine. The shirt is designed by Salvador de la Torre, a multidisciplinary artist who was featured in our second issue.

T-shirt and new issue available now via the Dyke Queen store.

Thank you

Here's your chance to get copies of our first and second issues!

Hi friends! 

We’re finishing up the next issue of Dyke Queen that will be published early next year. The theme of the issue is “Recipes from Queerantine” and will feature recipes that brought queer people comfort during quarantine. Each contributor shares a special recipe (of wellness, love, care) and a reflection on how they found queer community during a time of deep isolation. 

We all had to be careful, especially early on in the pandemic when everything was so up in the air. Some people created pods early on with close friends in their bubble. Others didn’t feel safe to do so. I spent more time outside and at the beach than probably ever. I’m talking about March of 2020 until late last year, when the world started opening up again. I don’t want to forget last year or the big changes that came out of the pandemic. The pandemic that we’re still in!

Recipes from Queerantine was created to commemorate that time and show that despite the many challenges the pandemic posed, we, as queer people, continued to find time for joy and community. 

To raise funds to print issue 003, we are selling copies of the first and second issues of Dyke Queen (shown below). To buy a copy of either issue, or both, please reply to this email, or DM us on Instagram @dykequeenzine. 

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Issue 002, the love issue, features:

Artist Salvador de la Torre spends hours delicately embroidering their narrative on significant objects from their past. Designer Barbara Sanchez-Kane  weaves her own dark, beautiful world, blending politics, sexuality, and social commentary through the filter of fashion. In “For Roses,” poet Alex Hall bridges the joy and pain of queer identity and a relationship to the larger community. And the photo essay “Amigas Romanticas” showcases the passion and fantasy of love, and how it sometimes finds us in unexpected places.

Issue 001

Dyke Queen zine started as a DIY personal zine written by Yezmin Villarreal, featuring original illustrations and design by Bridget Ore. It is a zine about personal discovery and the experience of finally coming into your own as a queer person.

Features:

- An essay about meeting the poet, Eileen Myles, and seeing them as a possibility model

- “June,” a poem about Pulse and the month’s significance to queer history

- An ode to a “denim daddy” jacket

- An illustrated reflection about buzzing your hair for the first time

And much more!

Read Dyke Queen as it’s meant to be read: on the beach with your girlfriend. 

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Now on to some recommendations: 

Queer reads:

Fatima Daas - The Last One. The NYT wrote a great profile on Fatima and her novel. The Last One is a short, beautiful lyrical novel about her experience growing up in France as an Algerian Muslim lesbian. 

Venita Blackburn - How to Wrestle a Girl: Stories. Read “Smoothies,” a short story by her that’s available online. It will take you out! 

Kamala Puligandla - You Can Vibe Me On My FemmePhone. A queer novella featuring a feminist phone (that sometimes gets a little too personal!), a queer horse-play kink scene, and love. 

Fellowships/grants/opportunities:

Deming Fund - Grants ($500 - $1500) for feminists in the arts. Jan 31 deadline.

MacDowell Fellowship - A six-week artist residency that provides you with a personal studio. Feb 10, 2022 deadline.

Robert Giard Grant for Emerging LGBTQ+ Photographers - ​​This grant supports the creation of work by emerging LGBTQ+ photographers whose projects address issues of sexuality, gender, or LGBTQ+ identity. Jan 17, 2022 deadline. 

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Thank you for supporting Dyke Queen ❤️‍🔥

The Van Dykes Project

with Devyn Galindo.

Pictured: Devyn Galindo at Elysian Park in Los Angeles, 2020. Photo by Yezmin Villarreal.

I still remember when I saw my first Devyn Galindo photo. I was on my laptop and came across an article about We Are Still Here, Devyn’s stunning photobook featuring L.A. Chicanx youth. I was so blown away that I emailed them to say how much I loved their work. I never do that with artists I don’t know.

Devyn’s photos stick out to me stylistically, but also because of the subjects she chooses to photograph—queer and trans people, the Latinx community, people of color, and now queers communing with nature and travel in her newest zine, The Van Dykes Project. 

It hasn’t always been safe for queer people and people of color to take on nature and the open road in the way that we see our favorite characters do in films and novels. Devyn’s work challenges that notion with The Van Dykes Project—she goes deep into nature, into northern California, into Texas (in The Van Dykes Project Vol. 1), to commune with and interview queer people in places outside of the metropolitan cities of New York and Los Angeles. 

When I first heard that Devyn was working on a project about The Van Dykes, I was ecstatic. I have my own special connection to the Van Dykes. Like Devyn, I first heard about them after reading Ariel Levy’s iconic 2009 New Yorker article “Lesbian Nation.” If you haven’t read Ariel Levy’s article, do yourself a favor and read it. 

I first read the article in 2016 and shared it with my girlfriend at the time and my group of friends. We dubbed ourselves “Van Dykes” in honor of Lamar Van Dyke and all the dykes in the article who took to the road in pursuit of freedom—from a heteronormative, patriarchal world—and, most importantly, fun. My friends and I went on our own adventures, traveling to Mexico, northern California, and throughout Los Angeles—always taking the spirit of the tongue-in-cheek political conspirator Van Dykes with us as an added passenger.

As queer people we aren’t always taught about the queer ancestors who came before us and paved the way. Devyn’s Van Dykes Project keeps the legacy and spirit of the Van Dykes alive and introduces them to new generations of queer people who may be inspired to go on their own adventures like Devyn.

Read my conversation with the photographer Devyn Galindo below.

Editor’s note: This interview was conducted December 2020 in Los Angeles.

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All Van Dyke Project images courtesy of Devyn Galindo.

Yez: Let’s talk about the original Van Dykes from the 1970s—a caravan of lesbians that traveled the U.S. and Mexico seeking a life of “radical rebellion and feminist empowerment.” What about them inspired you to go on a cross-country road trip as an ode to them?

Devyn: I was already planning on going on a cross-country road trip and I wanted to interview queers along the way. The first Van Dykes [zine] was really important to me because I came out in the South and we were going to go through the South. I wanted to get in touch with Southern queers and see what their experience was like coming out as a queer person in the South. That was my first agenda.

While doing pre-production research before going on the trip, my ex-girlfriend and I found this article in the New Yorker about the original Van Dykes. I read that and I thought: this is crazy! 

This article was from over 10 years ago and I thought it was crazy because this is exactly what we’re doing. Ours was a little more journalistic on the trip, not just wiling out, but we were so inspired by the fact that this had already happened. There had already been a caravan of dykes that traveled all over the United States and Mexico. We felt like we were very naturally following in their footsteps, traveling the same roads or like we’ve all been here before. I just felt like a lot of time melding together.

I care very deeply about carrying our ancestors with us. I’m trying to tell stories of the future but always with an understanding and reference to the past because we can’t be here without their existence and trailblazing. That was always in the back of my mind on the trip. I couldn’t believe that there was an original Van Dykes and we had to name this project as an homage to them. The second issue was really, really special because I got to speak with Lamar Van Dyke, who was one of the original Van Dykes. It felt full circle meeting Lamar and talking for hours. She rolled us a joint and we just drank wine with her and talked about what it was like to age as a dyke and what it was like to move through the world and still feel in a political rage. 

From my perspective, being a dyke is very political and it has a new meaning in 2021 than it did back then but at the root of it we’re just trying to stand up for what we believe in.

Y: One of the most amazing things about your project is that you interviewed THE LAMAR VAN DYKE. She’s an icon, if we ever had one in our community. She is the original subject that inspired the New Yorker story on the Van Dykes, which is how you and me and the rest of the dykes who are obsessed with the Van Dykes first heard of her. How did you connect with her? And what did she think of the fact that you were so inspired by her that you started your own Van Dykes project? 

Devyn: Can I say something else real quick? This is how weird and energetically insane this is, OK? I read the article and my friend came to the book launch, opened the book, and said, “Wait, Lamar! I know her. She’s one of my good friend's grandmother and I grew up spending time with her in Seattle.” I was like, what? It was just so full circle to have people in our community and that community. It’s all so small when you really think about it and we’re all so much more easily connected now. We can find each other now in a hashtag on Instagram. It’s great that we can do that.

Yez: What did she think about you making a project that was inspired by her and the rest of the Van Dykes from the 1970’s? It obviously touched you so much that you named this project as an homage to them.

Devyn: She was really excited. I definitely wanted to honor the incredible Van Dykes that came before us. From what I gather from the spirit of the Van Dykes, the more the merrier. 

The Van Dykes as a zine is a collection of all of our stories. it’s just going to keep growing and bring in new people. Hopefully it will inspire more community. I want to do queer campouts in the future. I want to create more community-oriented spaces. Lamar loves this new generation of Van Dykes—she was pretty stoked. I gave her some Van Dyke hoodies. She gave me some of her shirts that said, “Van Dykes.” It was really really special and I love the relationship we’ve been building as intergenerational dykes homies. 

Pictured: Devyn Galindo.

Yez: Let’s talk about the pop-up you had for the release of the Van Dykes zine during quarantine in November of 2020. You brought out your 1970’s VW camper van and wheatpasted Van Dyke posters in Silverlake in Los Angeles. You announced it on Instagram. Was that the first Van Dykes event?

Devyn: Originally I was going to have a whole party at Milk Studios, but we had to find the right timing and stuff. I thought, you know what, let me just guerilla-style this, in the spirit of the original Van Dykes. Let’s just do it on the street. Let’s wheatpaste these posters and do a pop-up and try to create a little bit of community in a really dark and strange time. I know that we probably would have had more people come through if it wasn’t for COVID, but I was happy to see familiar faces. We’re not able to be at the bars, or be on a sweaty dance floor together anymore so I just wanted to see my community in real life even if it’s socially distanced. I had been craving that.

It’s been rough not being able to see people. We have our quarantine pods, but as queer people we have such a small portion of this world where we feel safe, so to not have those safe spaces right now feels hopeless. I think a lot of people have been struggling with a lot of mental health issues and in and out of depression during COVID. I went through a really bad depression and I don’t usually get depressed ever. I’m just trying to create things that inspire people. We’re almost through this!

YEZ: You’ve published two issues of the Van Dykes zine. This is the second one. What was the inspiration behind each issue? How will the Van Dykes Project evolve and grow?

Devyn: I see the Van Dykes zine as an ongoing project for probably the rest of my life. When we made the first issue, I had just gotten the van. I had just gotten into a relationship, and it was inspired by the spirit of that, you know? Let’s hit the road and you’re gonna be navigating these spaces as two queer women. Depending on how I present, I move through spaces in an unsafe way in the South. In her experience, she was moving through the South as a black woman so we were constantly having conversations - unpacking what it meant to be moving through these spaces and land where many of our ancestor’s blood is in the land. We tried to focus on stories that were in our immediate network and community.

The first one took place over the span of three months. We were on the road longer; I was still figuring out the formula of how I wanted it to go. Hope was doing the interview portion. For this issue, I did the interviews. I had intimate conversations with folks and then I shot them. This one built off the last one. I learned a lot of what I wanted and didn’t want. I wanted to make it feel like it was a personal page out of my journal mixed with interviews and images of people so it has more of an edge. This time around, it’s a little darker and psychedelic, and experimental. It has more touch of the hand. I love how the first one turned out, but I think it was missing that for me.

I see the project evolving and hopefully gaining more collaborators; maybe even taking it internationally. I really want to do one in Mexico. Even if I can’t take the van, I would love in a post-COVID world to capture stories in the spirit of travel and meet new queers all over the place. I see it going in the direction of organizing queer campouts and more community-focused events so that we can grow it together. That would be my dream. I know there’s other dykes out there with vans, so we just gotta find them. Or a Prius, or whatever; I know people camp out of their cars.

Yez: You’re a photographer. Let’s talk about the photos! They’re so beautiful. The photos are so intimate and vulnerable, whether it’s you skinny dipping with some of the subjects in your project, or your friend Erin coming back from foraging in the woods with blueberries in her hand.

I’ve been following your work since I first came across photos from your We Are Still Here project. It blew me away, and I emailed you when I saw those photos to tell you. I didn’t even know you, but I felt so connected to your photography that I reached out. What was your approach to making these images?

Devyn: How do I approach photography? Literally up until the time I started shooting this project, I was in a deep, deep depression. I think it was mostly because my biggest source of sanity is being able to create through whatever emotions I have and the fact that I felt like it was stripped away during COVID, was difficult. I couldn’t meet up with people. I couldn’t work. I couldn’t do anything. I just felt really stuck with no way to express those things. I went through a pretty rough break-up and then immediately hit the road. I felt like I had a lot to say and a lot to get out. 

It felt like a visual purge for me to have my camera at all times and try to look for the beauty and inspiration everywhere. I know at my core that my purpose is to communicate that. I just tried to crawl out of my rabbit hole. My approach with this was just don't put pressure on it; just let it come. Let it flow naturally. Wake up, make art and don’t overthink it. 

The people that made it into the book, I met randomly. It wasn’t premeditated. I was staying at an Airbnb that just happened to have two dykes running it. I ended up interviewing them; their names are Preston and Nicole. 

And then Marie, this is like cosmic-level stuff, right? My friend and I had these paddle boards that we took all over the place. I was trying to exercise and make art everyday to just get my mind right. We paddle boarded for like four miles, and we’re not expert paddleboarders, so we’re dying by the time we get there. We look over and on the beach. We see these two women. They’re making out, and I was, like, we found dyke island! This is sick!

We paddle boarded all the way over and parked next to them on the beach. We ended up chatting it up. I took some photos of them and they’re in the book too. It just felt very cosmically aligned. 

My approach to photography is to first observe and then ask permission to make images with folks. Make it as collaborative and easy as possible. I like it when people forget the camera is there and I can just capture a moment of who they really are. That’s the hardest part about making images in today’s day and age. Everyone is so ready to have their photo taken or they have a version of themselves that they want seen. I try to get to the core, like, who are you really and try to express that. The images come through the way they do because I’m sharing my vulnerable side of them and they’re sharing their vulnerable side of me. We’re in a state of rawness and that’s the space I try to make images in.

Y: You talk about “queertopia” in the zine. You ask your subjects to explain what it means to them. After going on two Van Dyke zine road trips, I’m curious—what does “queertopia” mean to you?

Devyn: To me, queertopia means moving in any space without fear. Having access to land and water with my community would be my version of queertopia, like a version of back to the land. But not too far from the city because I love the city. I love the information; the mind stimulation from the city. Having a farm would be really cool.

Y: That’s what the Van Dyke’s were all about—stopping on Women's Land and creating community with other women who were trying to thrive economically outside of of the cisheteropatriarchial economic world we live in. That same energy.

Devyn: I do think we’re living in a parallel time of a little bit of back to the land, like how there were those Women’s Land projects. Maybe land was a little maybe more affordable or attainable back then than it is now.

I would love, love for a portion of a future Van Dykes to find Women’s + Queer Land projects that still exist, I should say, because I think that it would be great to explore queer spaces in general. I know there’s some in Tennessee.

Yez: I’ve heard that some still exist, but it’s older women who have been living that lifestyle for a long time.

Devyn: If I had enough time and resources, I would love to try to track all that down and see what’s left. What future land projects are in the works. I do think as queers we live really alternative lifestyles in general so our family structures look very different. It’s more chosen and we can make it whatever we want it to be. I’m always talking to my friends, like let’s all get together and buy a plot of land. I see myself moving towards that probably in the next ten years or so. 

Y: In the zine, you talk with two women who tell you about how they were disowned by their families for being queer. It’s important to cover stories like this because mainstream culture thinks that all queer people are safe now because of visibility, but that’s not the case. I thought it was really powerful to include their story in the zine. Here’s the direct quote from the interview:

“You come from a lineage of ancestors who were strong enough to stand up against not just society, but most times their family of origins. We have had to be willing to walk away from the families who raised us, and stand up to the abusive religious beliefs that tried to separate us from society and a spiritual foundation. You now live in a time where so much progress has been made. Appreciate it. Keep digging in and rooting down to the wisdom of your beings. Know that you are sacred and loved no matter what flavor you come in.”

“Remember that we are all traumatized to some degree or another just be being part of the Rainbow family. Try to have empathy and patience for one another when we’re exhibiting toxic behaviors or going through growing pains. Remember that hurt people hurt people; when a family member causes you harm, please remember not to take it personally. If we can learn to shift into love and kindness as much as possible, healing is attainable--it just takes time and love.”

Devyn: Despite the mainstream coverage we have now, it’s still very, very much a fact for a lot of people. Even in the microaggression. We still have so far to go and creating those healing spaces for our people is a mission the Van Dykes is about. Just like with We Are Still Here and the Van Dykes project, I want to leave behind things that in a hundred years somebody could pick up and say: we existed, this is our lives, this is our experience.

Yez: You describe The Van Dykes project as an object you want to be discovered by queer youth in a hundred years. Why is leaving an impact on the next generation important to you?

Devyn: I think that exactly what you were saying that I don't feel like our history is well-documented. There is a lot of amazing art that has come in the past and photos and things, but because we’re queer there’s less interest to archive it. There are  archives like ONE Archives at USC. I wanna shout out ONE Archives because they are such an incredible resource. 

It’s hard to find people that you can relate to, history where you can see yourself or see other people like you. You’re seeking community and you want to know how somebody else knew how to navigate the space. It just helps to know that you're not alone. The things that I choose to document are parts of my personal identity that I feel like I don’t have as much access to  resources as I'd like.

Leaving it for future generations to just, like, who knows, maybe future generations could care less and they're just gonna be avatars on the internet.

For me, personally, I care a lot about queer history and documenting our stories. That is another reason I feel very much like a two-spirited historian in some ways. 

Yez: The Van Dyke zines are so well designed and printed. Can you talk about your relationship with self-publishing? How can people support your work?

Devyn: It’s hard to know where to start, right? If you’re creative, it’s hard to know. 

OK, I don’t have any contacts in the publishing world. I’m just starting from ground zero, but I can’t describe it. It just comes out.

I have to get it out of myself. I have to put it in something that is a book. I don’t know how else to describe it, but I think I find the design process to be really, really fun. I spend a lot of time with the images, laying them out, figuring out how I want the narrative to feel. And what the flow of the story is going to be; the visual storytelling throughout each of my books. I re-edit and I re-edit and I re-edit. Once I feel like it’s in a decent place I link up with a graphic designer. 

I explain to them the project and they help me lay it out a little more to design standards. It’s  always a nice collaborative process to have someone on that level working with you. Otherwise you second guess yourself or overthink things. It’s nice to have collaborators. I really enjoy that process. 

I really believe in independent publishing and self-publishing because there’s no one telling you what to make. You have true freedom but it can be a little daunting because it’s expensive.

I have to pay all this money. It costs so much, but it’s so worth it.

It’s worth it to make the investment in your ideas and in yourself because it’s something tangible that people can have and see. Oh, this is your point of view? This is your perspective. Your story to tell. 

I’d like other creatives to keep up with that. Otherwise you see the same thing. Publishers publish the same people. It’s always the same formula. So instead of getting mad about that, I’m making my own way. I’m carving my own path. That feels pretty good.

People can find my books at Printed Matter in New York or on my website devyngalindo.com or vandykesproject.com 

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