We Have Always Been Here

June 3, 2019
Seeking a foundation rooted in home, family, and faith, journalist and photographer Habib explores her identity in a sincere debut that’s articulate in its depiction of the immigrant experience but thin as a memoir of sexual awakening. As a five-year-old Ahmadi Muslim in Lahore, Pakistan, surrounded by “women who didn’t have the blueprint for claiming their lives,” Habib witnessed her pious mother buckle under the belief that “Allah hates the loud laughter of women!” When political upheavals escalated persecution of Ahmadi Muslims, the family fled to Toronto in 1991. There, 10-year-old Habib felt “transported to a different planet” with “boys and girls mingling freely.” At 16, she endured an arranged marriage to an older cousin, later annulled after she attempted suicide; a second marriage at 19 offered escape from her family. By her mid-20s, a mentor opened a “window into a queer world.” She divorced her husband and began traveling the world and taking sexual partners who shaped her “experience of how race and desire intersect.” She writes candidly about her experiences: she joined a queer-friendly mosque, started a project photographing queer Muslims, and eventually came out to her parents. Habib’s narrative is brave and unique, yet her most affecting descriptions speak less to sexual freedom and more to immigrant Pakistani culture. This sometimes falls short of its promise.

August 16, 2019

In this poignant memoir, Habib (Just Me and Allah: A Queer Muslim Photo Project) relates her life as a young immigrant in Canada. At age ten, the author left Pakistan with her family to flee religious persecution. Raised as a devout Muslim, Habib learned painfully early how to navigate the social cruelties meted out by her peers. The bullying she experienced from her elementary school classmates resulted in feelings of loneliness and frustration. In high school, things started to turn around when Habib attended a more diverse school and met students with backgrounds similar to her own. However, as a young teenager, she discovered she had to accept an arranged marriage to her first cousin. It was only after this marriage that Habib realized that her sexual identity did not mesh with her parents' plans. Ultimately, she broke free of the relationship and found her authentic self. VERDICT Habib's story will resonate with those who have faced similar challenges of finding their place in a culture different from their own. For all readers, it will illuminate the immigrant experience.--Mary Jennings, Camano Island Lib., WA

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2019
In this unforgettable memoir, journalist and activist Habib creates space and representation for the next generation of queer Muslim voices. Beginning with her childhood in Pakistan and her grade-school immigration to Toronto, Habib paints a searing portrait of her early struggle to find chosen family and community. Habib married her first husband (an arrangement) while she was still in high school and moved in with her second husband as an escape not long after the first marriage dissolved. Her young adulthood led Habib to believe that marriage was little more than a legal trap, and it took her many years to find love that was free, supportive, and empowering. Her coming out as queer was not one big moment, but rather a winding process of self-discovery buoyed by an unwavering network of allies. The memoir reads like a love letter to Habib's younger self: she begs readers to embrace radical, unavoidable, beautiful change in themselves and those around them, and to know that it will always lead them closer to their truest selves.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

April 15, 2019
A queer Muslim woman recounts her emotional, sexual, and spiritual unfurling. In her debut, writer, photographer, and activist Habib begins with her childhood in Pakistan, where she learned the protective value of hiding, which insulated her from public stigma (and her mother's private devastation) after Habib survived child sexual abuse at age 4. Hiding also provided tenuous safety for her Ahmadi Muslim family amid growing state and extremist violence against the religious minority. Masking her feelings also proved useful when her family sought asylum in Canada and "traded one set of anxieties for another." There, the author endured racist bullying, growing alienation from her family, and the despair of her arranged marriage at 16: "Getting to know men was not something the women in my family were encouraged to do. They were to be avoided at all times, like attack dogs without muzzles." After desperation drove Habib to attempt suicide, her survival pushed her to emerge from under the patriarchal, homophobic expectations of both her culture of origin and the broader Western culture within which she matured. She started by bravely defying her forced union, which propelled her on a challenging, revelatory journey to return to her queerness, faith, and family (biological and chosen). Religious and secular readers alike will be touched by the way Habib's faith has been strengthened, rather than undermined, by Islamophobia as well as by the compassion and candor with which she examines her complex filial relationships. Triumphantly, the narrative culminates in scenes of a life full of purpose, power, and belonging. Habib found a LGBTQ-centered mosque, created a queer Muslim portrait project, and accepted invitations to speak all over the world. Though the author's prose is occasionally overworked, the book is a moving example of resilience and healing in the face of racial, sexual, and familial trauma. A poignantly told memoir about a life fiercely lived.

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