Reviews with content warning for Racism - Life as a Unicorn: A Journey from Shame to Pride and Everything in Between

Whizzed through this one!!

An excellent memoir, with a surprising amount of nuance. I was somewhat cautious it would be told in a more spiteful way (which would be completely valid!), but it was fascinating to hear about the queerer aspects of the quran and the endless struggle of religion vs culture, and amrou's relationship with and journey within Islam. I have had so many conversations with Muslim people about this exact topic, and it was wonderful to have such a detailed account.

I felt a lot of interpretations closely mirror actions of other religious family groups which receive far less stigma in britain, which amrou was able to address delicately with a lot of thought. This was very intelligently written!

It has been a great experience reflecting on my own queerness and whiteness, and the in depth experience of queer Muslims which I so often look for but rarely find!

Definitely recommend this, marked as a 4 as the writing style at times felt perhaps a little too overwhelmed with metaphors and overblown artistic style that wasn't quite to my personal liking (but seems very in line with the writers character!)

Also absolutely loved the absolutely bizzare likening of Allah to some sort of sadistic DM at the beginning, and how religious trauma can be processed through the queer and kink scene.

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aus10england's review against another edition

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fast-paced

4.75

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hollifr's review against another edition

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challenging dark hopeful inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

3.0

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kotroby's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

I’m glad I found this book through the Storygraph 2023 Genre challenge, as I don’t think I would have crossed paths with it otherwise. As I have been doing with all non-fiction books I listened to the audio version of this story, narrated by the author, and just want to say it was a very pleasant experience. This book addresses a lot of sensitive and important issues from racism to homophobia and transphobia, acceptance (or lack there of), colonialism and it’s impacts today and wraps it all up in a deeply personal and moving story. I appreciate how hard it must have been for the author to dig through all their traumatic memories to craft this story for us, and as always the honesty and no bs approach to the facts really does come across to build an overall better story. I feel for the child that had to grow up detached from their community and heritage, that felt the need to fit into a world outside of their own because their world seemed to be shunning them so strongly. I imagine it can be hard sometimes to write about your experiences growing up because we don’t want our parents to be seen in a negative light, especially one we paint ourselves, so the fact that the author never tried to defend their parents’ actions, but rather justified them and explained their reasoning and how they’re own heritage had affected their decisions, was refreshing, and reminded me fondly of ‘I’m Glad My Mother Died’ which was another deeply moving memoir that shared that vein of deep honesty. This is a story of grief, grief for the life this child didn’t get to have because of the place and time they were born, of rage for the trauma this young person went through at the hands of parents who in their heart had only the best intentions even if misplaced, but ultimately it’s a story of love, of accepting your place in the world and feeling that the world accepts you, and finding your people. It’s a beautifully moving story of how this person grew to accept themselves and feel accepted by others, and at its heart it’s a love story for their mother.

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kellys_bookcase's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

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anniereads221's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful informative reflective

5.0

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