My Heart May Be Satisfied Common Seeing 2025

Now entering its fifteenth year, the UO Common Reading program cultivates campus-wide engagement and programming around a shared book that is selected for its capacity to generate cross-cultural understanding, broaden perspectives, and create dialogue between students, faculty, and staff.  The selection for the 2024-2025 academic year is Hijab Butch Bluesby Lamya H., a queer coming-of-age memoir that addresses intersectional themes of race, sexuality, gender, class and faith through the author’s experience as nonbinary, queer, Muslim immigrant.

My Heart May Be Satisfied was created as a visual response to Lamya’s vulnerable and profoundly empowering storytelling and brings together the work of four artists: Diana Al-Hadid, Jamil Hellu, Baseera Khan, and Saba Taj. All four are first- or second-generation immigrants to the United States whose bodies of work address many of the themes present in Hijab Butch Blues, such as gender identity and sexuality, navigating challenges of immigration and perceptions of ‘Otherness’, combating harmful stereotypes, reconciling faith, or lack of, and identity, and creating, uplifting, and maintaining community.

This exhibition was organized by Alexis Garcia, Post-Graduate Museum Fellow in European and American Art, as well as member of the 2024-2025 Common Reading Selection Committee, and Danielle Knapp, McCosh Curator.