OUR SCENE | NIGHTLIFE
Queers, Queens, and Superheroes Muslim Drag Queen Amrou Al-Kadhi BY KASSIDY TARALA | PHOTOS COURTESY OF AMROU AL-KADHI
Drag performer and writer Amrou Al-Kadhi discusses their upbringing as a queer Muslim and their recent memoir “Life as a Unicorn.” “Queer and trans people show the world what it is to be free,” says Amrou Al-Kadhi, the British-Iraqi drag queen, writer, and filmmaker. Al-Kadhi, who recently published their first book Life as a Unicorn: A Journey from Shame to Pride and Everything in Between, grew up feeling like the only queer kid in the entire Middle East. “I was a kid before the internet or social media was a thing, so I really had no access to queer representation,” they say. “I was taught to be very godfearing and that gender or sexual transgression was an unforgivable sin, so I suppose I was brought up with this deep, ingrained fear that my existence was an complete monstrosity, and I had no one to talk to about it or anyway in which to express myself. This deeply held fear that I am wrong in my absolute core has never really left, and I have to fight everyday to counteract it.”
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54 LAVENDER JUNE 2-15, 2022