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June & July reading
I didn't do a post in June because I'd only finished one book that month.
these past few months I've been mainly reading nonfiction relating to queer muslims. I've been writing Afdeling Q fanfic since last summer, so it's not like writing a queer muslim character is new to me, but this year I've been working on a wip where that aspect of his character features much more heavily than in past fics, so I descended into a research rabbit hole. my goal isn't to write him 'accurately' because even canon doesn't do that (the books are SO racist, you guys), but authentically. I wanted to construct a backstory (since the films don't give us one and the books are horrendously racist) and world view for him that felt authentic. I want people to read this - the few people who would read this fic - to see this version of Assad and think, yes, this feels true to the character. it feels true to what he could be like if he were a living breathing human being.
it was heartening, for me, to discover that elements of backstory and personality and world views I'd created and established very early on were reflected in real narratives. some details were even eerily 1:1. I'd read an account from one person of a specific experience and it would turn out to be almost exactly the same as something I'd jotted down in my notes several months ago. it's heartening, and a relief, to discover that I hadn't inadvertently made a caricature (or worse) out of him.
the best part about all this reading I've been doing is it has made a huge difference to me in understanding how queer muslims move through the world differently from white (western) queer people, both in relation to westernes and other easterners, especially the differences between being queer in MENA and being queer in the west. from a writing perspective it's really helped me solidify this character's thought patterns, experiences, traumas, hopes - his motivations. and as somebody who isn't religious at all but nevertheless has been brought up in a more or less secular society informed by Christian values and cultures, it's been especially valuable to see all these different accounts and opinions and experiences from muslims (ranging from religious to secular) and how that also informs their experiences.
I don't like writing didactic fiction, I'm not especially interested in writing stories intended to educate. I'm interested in exploring humans, when it comes down to it, why they do and say the things they do, how they are shaped through their experiences. that does sometimes mean exploring specific topics. I have received a number of comments on fanfic I've written that are maybe more 'topic-y' than other fic, from readers thanking me for educating them, or highlighting a topic, or thanking me for the representation. I understand they come from a good place but I've always felt a bit queasy about those comments, because that's not why I wrote x fic. I didn't write it for the 'representation'. I didn't write 'issue fic'. I write about human relationships and that sometimes does mean digging into the question 'so, what's your trauma? why are you like this?' to put it bluntly, so that I can work out what the obstacles are for them getting together (because lbr I write romance like 99% of the time).
fandom, very broadly, and I feel, especially over the past 5 ish years? give or take? has slid a bit further along the scale towards...I hesitate to say 'purity' but towards some nebulous sort of 'if you don't condemn bad things in your fic then you condone it' and characters talk to each other in therapy speak and never make mistakes ever and/or fic has to be instructive and god forbid characters ever have sex without a condom! not all fans etc. but there's this atmosphere in fandom of this ideology that I feel is very hard to escape, both because I see it in so many fics I read, and I see it in the comments I receive (one memorable comment that still haunts me to this day is from somebody who was upset that Remus was angry at Sirius about something because in a perfect world Remus wouldn't have been angry but just instantly accepted the situation or something...and I'm like, my dude. people are irrational and emotional and entirely entitled to have whatever feelings they have about a situation? by making a character behave poorly I'm not saying this is how one *should* behave? and that's not even getting into all the nasty comments I got on the one forced coming out fic where a lot of people behaved badly and I wound up having to put in performative disclaimers at the top of the fic.)
which is to say. I'm not doing all this reading by and about queer muslims because I'm writing an issue fic about a queer muslim because representation, or something, and it all needs to be *perfect* and *accurate* and *never wrong, ever*.
I'm doing all this reading because I love this character and I need to know more about him. I'm writing the fic to find out.
and also, like, let's not kid ourselves here, there are like 3 people reading the fic in the first place, one of whom I know for a fact is reading it through google translate because they don't speak Danish. I'm not doing any of this for clout. I'm doing it because this fic had been living rent free in my head for months before I even started writing it, and the only way to exorcise it from my head is by finding out the answers to all my questions and musings, and the way to do that is by writing it. so I can find out.
so I've read a bunch of academic articles that I won't bother listing here, and I've finished a small handful of books, and have more that I'm still reading.
Fiction
Beloved Poison (Jem Flockhart, #1) by E.S. Thomson
Dark Asylum (Jem Flockhart, #2) by E.S. Thomson
the first two in the Jem Flockhart series, of which I picked up and read the 3rd last summer. it was fun to see how Will and Jem met and how quickly they became ride & die besties. the first book had the hallmarks of a debut novel - finding its feet - and tbh the second also felt a bit like it hadn't quite worked it out yet. maybe it's just because I read the 3rd book first and it felt more solid and polished etc. in comparison? I don't know. I did enjoy these, don't get me wrong.
Non-fiction
The Queer Arab Glossary edited by Marwan Kabour, foreword by Rabih Alameddine, illustrations by Haitham Haddad
part glossary, part essay collection. I guess I'm too much of an academic/linguist, because I felt the glossary was lacking in usage examples. it's divided by dialect rather than region (levantine dialects, iraqi dialects, gulf dialects, egyptian dialects, sudanese dialects, maghrebi dialects) and it's bilingual, the word is in english and arabic, and the description is in english and arabic. but there isn't a single example sentence to go with any of the words.
here's the first entry, without the arabic because I don't think I could accurately transcribe that:
it doesn't say how it's used in a sentence, or whether this is a term somebody would use for themselves, or only used about somebody else, or both, or anything like that. there is a short description, but not very much context to go off.
it's nevertheless very informative - it's one thing to know on a factual level that french colonialism was/is a thing in the middle east, it's another to see it reflected in the vocabulary
the second half of the book is essays, some which lean more academic and others which are more reflective. there's one that reads like a fictional screenplay/conversation. they're all about language in some way or other, reflecting on the glossary as well as language in specific context.
Bøssernes Danmarkshistorie 1900–2020 af Lars Henriksen og Chantal Al-Arab
this is a Danish book that I picked up when I was home over Christmas last year and that I've been dipping in and out of. it's basically 'a gay history of Denmark'. it's not terribly academic about it, it's a coffee table book more than anything (it is suitably huge and colourful, and full of illustrations) and while it does have a long list of sources at the back, there is no fucking index in this book and it annoys me SO FUCKING MUCH. the foreword literally says they hope this book will be used as a reference but that's going to be a bit difficult when there's no index in the back don't you think.
it's otherwise nice - a bit superficial in places - and while I'd appreciate in-line citations to help find further reading (instead of having to skim through the list of sources in the back) this is explicitly not an academic text. it does have people in it that I know personally, which is fun to see. my brother is not in it though, lol.
Life As A Unicorn: A Journey From Shame to Pride and Everything In Between by Amrou Al-Kadhi
memoir written by drag queen Glamrou about their growing up queer in an Iraqi household. I actually picked this up in 2022? I think? I just didn't get around to reading it until now. a harrowing read at times as Amrou doesn't hold back from describing the ugly parts of their upbringing and mental health struggles and their own poor behaviour/actions. it very much ends on a happy and hopeful note - this was published in 2019/2020 so I'd hope that they are now living their best life, pandemic notwithstanding.
what I thought would be my biggest takeaway from this memoir is Amrou's struggle with their queer identity and islamic identity and while that certainly is there, it opened my eyes to the struggle many muslims, queer or not, have with the west. Amrou's desire for western validation and acceptance and internalised islamophobia completely blindsided me and had me reflect on and re-evaluate past relationships and conversations with muslims in my life. I could recognise that when so and so muslim said or did x or y in the past it was possibly related to the things Amrou describes.
Sexuality in the Arab World Edited by Samir Khalaf, John Gagnon
from this I only read these two chapters:
Creating Queer Space in Beirut by Sofian Merabet pages 199-242
Transition Beirut: Gay Identities, Lived Realities by Jared McCormick pages 243-260
I might well come back to the rest later. Creating Queer Space was one of those academic texts that felt impenetrable to me, the writer was an anthroplogist or sociologist or something and kept referring to theories and frameworks that I don't really know. I can sort of see what was going on in this text but ultimately I gave up on understanding the abstract academic ideas and stuck to the descriptions of actual things that happened, i.e. interactions between men, physical spaces, that sort of thing.
Transition Beirut on the other hand flowed more easily for me and discussed specifically identity and the language of identities, and various forces that impact these - in this text, global consumerism and English language internet! (Queer Arab Glossary also touches on this subject - some words are loaned from English) an entire section focuses on Helem, an NGO fighting for queer rights and based in Libanon (as the only queer NGO actually based in the middle east, other NGOs for specific MENA countries are based outside the region) and how groundbreaking it is that their material is bilingual Arabic and English. basically McCormick concludes that the 'global gay identity' i.e. a western gay identity has arrived in Libanon, is there to stay, but is not the only way gay identities are formed there. it is touched upon here that queer identities in the middle east are different from how they are in the west, but it also presupposes that you already have knowledge on the topic.
Currently reading:
Unspeakable Love: Gay and Lesbian Life in the Middle East by Brian Whitaker (the updated 2011 edition)
This Arab Is Queer: An Anthology by LGBTQ+ Arab Writers edited by Elias Jahsah
Living Out Islam: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims by Scott Siraj al-Haqq Kugle (academic)
up next:
Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H.
when will I return to fiction??? I don't know. I don't feel like reading any fiction atm tbh.
these past few months I've been mainly reading nonfiction relating to queer muslims. I've been writing Afdeling Q fanfic since last summer, so it's not like writing a queer muslim character is new to me, but this year I've been working on a wip where that aspect of his character features much more heavily than in past fics, so I descended into a research rabbit hole. my goal isn't to write him 'accurately' because even canon doesn't do that (the books are SO racist, you guys), but authentically. I wanted to construct a backstory (since the films don't give us one and the books are horrendously racist) and world view for him that felt authentic. I want people to read this - the few people who would read this fic - to see this version of Assad and think, yes, this feels true to the character. it feels true to what he could be like if he were a living breathing human being.
it was heartening, for me, to discover that elements of backstory and personality and world views I'd created and established very early on were reflected in real narratives. some details were even eerily 1:1. I'd read an account from one person of a specific experience and it would turn out to be almost exactly the same as something I'd jotted down in my notes several months ago. it's heartening, and a relief, to discover that I hadn't inadvertently made a caricature (or worse) out of him.
the best part about all this reading I've been doing is it has made a huge difference to me in understanding how queer muslims move through the world differently from white (western) queer people, both in relation to westernes and other easterners, especially the differences between being queer in MENA and being queer in the west. from a writing perspective it's really helped me solidify this character's thought patterns, experiences, traumas, hopes - his motivations. and as somebody who isn't religious at all but nevertheless has been brought up in a more or less secular society informed by Christian values and cultures, it's been especially valuable to see all these different accounts and opinions and experiences from muslims (ranging from religious to secular) and how that also informs their experiences.
I don't like writing didactic fiction, I'm not especially interested in writing stories intended to educate. I'm interested in exploring humans, when it comes down to it, why they do and say the things they do, how they are shaped through their experiences. that does sometimes mean exploring specific topics. I have received a number of comments on fanfic I've written that are maybe more 'topic-y' than other fic, from readers thanking me for educating them, or highlighting a topic, or thanking me for the representation. I understand they come from a good place but I've always felt a bit queasy about those comments, because that's not why I wrote x fic. I didn't write it for the 'representation'. I didn't write 'issue fic'. I write about human relationships and that sometimes does mean digging into the question 'so, what's your trauma? why are you like this?' to put it bluntly, so that I can work out what the obstacles are for them getting together (because lbr I write romance like 99% of the time).
fandom, very broadly, and I feel, especially over the past 5 ish years? give or take? has slid a bit further along the scale towards...I hesitate to say 'purity' but towards some nebulous sort of 'if you don't condemn bad things in your fic then you condone it' and characters talk to each other in therapy speak and never make mistakes ever and/or fic has to be instructive and god forbid characters ever have sex without a condom! not all fans etc. but there's this atmosphere in fandom of this ideology that I feel is very hard to escape, both because I see it in so many fics I read, and I see it in the comments I receive (one memorable comment that still haunts me to this day is from somebody who was upset that Remus was angry at Sirius about something because in a perfect world Remus wouldn't have been angry but just instantly accepted the situation or something...and I'm like, my dude. people are irrational and emotional and entirely entitled to have whatever feelings they have about a situation? by making a character behave poorly I'm not saying this is how one *should* behave? and that's not even getting into all the nasty comments I got on the one forced coming out fic where a lot of people behaved badly and I wound up having to put in performative disclaimers at the top of the fic.)
which is to say. I'm not doing all this reading by and about queer muslims because I'm writing an issue fic about a queer muslim because representation, or something, and it all needs to be *perfect* and *accurate* and *never wrong, ever*.
I'm doing all this reading because I love this character and I need to know more about him. I'm writing the fic to find out.
and also, like, let's not kid ourselves here, there are like 3 people reading the fic in the first place, one of whom I know for a fact is reading it through google translate because they don't speak Danish. I'm not doing any of this for clout. I'm doing it because this fic had been living rent free in my head for months before I even started writing it, and the only way to exorcise it from my head is by finding out the answers to all my questions and musings, and the way to do that is by writing it. so I can find out.
so I've read a bunch of academic articles that I won't bother listing here, and I've finished a small handful of books, and have more that I'm still reading.
Fiction
Beloved Poison (Jem Flockhart, #1) by E.S. Thomson
Dark Asylum (Jem Flockhart, #2) by E.S. Thomson
the first two in the Jem Flockhart series, of which I picked up and read the 3rd last summer. it was fun to see how Will and Jem met and how quickly they became ride & die besties. the first book had the hallmarks of a debut novel - finding its feet - and tbh the second also felt a bit like it hadn't quite worked it out yet. maybe it's just because I read the 3rd book first and it felt more solid and polished etc. in comparison? I don't know. I did enjoy these, don't get me wrong.
Non-fiction
The Queer Arab Glossary edited by Marwan Kabour, foreword by Rabih Alameddine, illustrations by Haitham Haddad
part glossary, part essay collection. I guess I'm too much of an academic/linguist, because I felt the glossary was lacking in usage examples. it's divided by dialect rather than region (levantine dialects, iraqi dialects, gulf dialects, egyptian dialects, sudanese dialects, maghrebi dialects) and it's bilingual, the word is in english and arabic, and the description is in english and arabic. but there isn't a single example sentence to go with any of the words.
here's the first entry, without the arabic because I don't think I could accurately transcribe that:
Ukht Rijāl
(Libanon)(Syria)
'Sister to men', i.e. manlike. Refers to a 'strong' girl with a masculine appearance and/or tough mannerisms that emulate normative masculine gender expression.
it doesn't say how it's used in a sentence, or whether this is a term somebody would use for themselves, or only used about somebody else, or both, or anything like that. there is a short description, but not very much context to go off.
it's nevertheless very informative - it's one thing to know on a factual level that french colonialism was/is a thing in the middle east, it's another to see it reflected in the vocabulary
Ṭanṭe/Ṭanṭina/Ṭanṭa
(Jordan)(Libanon)(Palestine)(Syria)
French for aunt, or elderly and well-respected woman. Can also mean queen, or just an elderly gay man.).
Coccinelle/Cocs
(Palestine)
Jacqueline Charlotte Dufresnoy, better known by her stage name Coccinelle (French for ladybird), was a French actress, entertainer and singer. She was transgender, and was the first widely publicised post-war gender reassignment case in Europe. In Israeli slang, the word coccinelle is used as a synonym for transgender, often derogatorily. The word is also common among Palestinian citizens of Israel, particularly older trans women who use the term to refer to each other.
the second half of the book is essays, some which lean more academic and others which are more reflective. there's one that reads like a fictional screenplay/conversation. they're all about language in some way or other, reflecting on the glossary as well as language in specific context.
Bøssernes Danmarkshistorie 1900–2020 af Lars Henriksen og Chantal Al-Arab
this is a Danish book that I picked up when I was home over Christmas last year and that I've been dipping in and out of. it's basically 'a gay history of Denmark'. it's not terribly academic about it, it's a coffee table book more than anything (it is suitably huge and colourful, and full of illustrations) and while it does have a long list of sources at the back, there is no fucking index in this book and it annoys me SO FUCKING MUCH. the foreword literally says they hope this book will be used as a reference but that's going to be a bit difficult when there's no index in the back don't you think.
it's otherwise nice - a bit superficial in places - and while I'd appreciate in-line citations to help find further reading (instead of having to skim through the list of sources in the back) this is explicitly not an academic text. it does have people in it that I know personally, which is fun to see. my brother is not in it though, lol.
Life As A Unicorn: A Journey From Shame to Pride and Everything In Between by Amrou Al-Kadhi
memoir written by drag queen Glamrou about their growing up queer in an Iraqi household. I actually picked this up in 2022? I think? I just didn't get around to reading it until now. a harrowing read at times as Amrou doesn't hold back from describing the ugly parts of their upbringing and mental health struggles and their own poor behaviour/actions. it very much ends on a happy and hopeful note - this was published in 2019/2020 so I'd hope that they are now living their best life, pandemic notwithstanding.
what I thought would be my biggest takeaway from this memoir is Amrou's struggle with their queer identity and islamic identity and while that certainly is there, it opened my eyes to the struggle many muslims, queer or not, have with the west. Amrou's desire for western validation and acceptance and internalised islamophobia completely blindsided me and had me reflect on and re-evaluate past relationships and conversations with muslims in my life. I could recognise that when so and so muslim said or did x or y in the past it was possibly related to the things Amrou describes.
Sexuality in the Arab World Edited by Samir Khalaf, John Gagnon
from this I only read these two chapters:
Creating Queer Space in Beirut by Sofian Merabet pages 199-242
Transition Beirut: Gay Identities, Lived Realities by Jared McCormick pages 243-260
I might well come back to the rest later. Creating Queer Space was one of those academic texts that felt impenetrable to me, the writer was an anthroplogist or sociologist or something and kept referring to theories and frameworks that I don't really know. I can sort of see what was going on in this text but ultimately I gave up on understanding the abstract academic ideas and stuck to the descriptions of actual things that happened, i.e. interactions between men, physical spaces, that sort of thing.
Transition Beirut on the other hand flowed more easily for me and discussed specifically identity and the language of identities, and various forces that impact these - in this text, global consumerism and English language internet! (Queer Arab Glossary also touches on this subject - some words are loaned from English) an entire section focuses on Helem, an NGO fighting for queer rights and based in Libanon (as the only queer NGO actually based in the middle east, other NGOs for specific MENA countries are based outside the region) and how groundbreaking it is that their material is bilingual Arabic and English. basically McCormick concludes that the 'global gay identity' i.e. a western gay identity has arrived in Libanon, is there to stay, but is not the only way gay identities are formed there. it is touched upon here that queer identities in the middle east are different from how they are in the west, but it also presupposes that you already have knowledge on the topic.
Currently reading:
Unspeakable Love: Gay and Lesbian Life in the Middle East by Brian Whitaker (the updated 2011 edition)
This Arab Is Queer: An Anthology by LGBTQ+ Arab Writers edited by Elias Jahsah
Living Out Islam: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims by Scott Siraj al-Haqq Kugle (academic)
up next:
Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H.
when will I return to fiction??? I don't know. I don't feel like reading any fiction atm tbh.
no subject
I think you are spot on with your comment about fandom! I find it quite disheartening how norms seem to be closing instead of opening.
Thank you for all the book recs! Perhaps you will like this documentary https://tv.nrk.no/serie/lett-aa-hate (hope it's available outside Norway).
no subject
I have officially hit 50k on this wip today so there will be a novel waiting for you when it's finally done :')
no subject
Thank you also for an interesting list of literature about LGBTQ and Islam! And good luck with the fanfic, I'm sure it will be great since you're so passionate about the subject :)
(Sorry for my bad english, and hope I didn't make any big mistakes, haha!)
no subject
thank you :)
your english is fine! :) du er selvfølgelig også altid velkommen til at kommentere på svensk i min journal hvis du hellere vil det ;)