From a god-fearing Muslim boy who is enruptured with his mother, to a vocal, queer drag queen who is estranged from him family. This is a heart breaking and also hilarious memoir about the author and how they became true to themselves.
Amrou knew that they was gay when, aged 10, they fikrst laid eyes pn Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone and it is love at first sight for them. Amrou’s parents as you can imagine weren’t so happy with this outcome ….
Life as a Unicorn is a funny yet totally devastating story of a search for belonging, following the painful and yet surprising process of transferring from a god-fearing Muslin boy. It follows his transformation and the hurdles which he had to overcome to be the loving and fun filled individual that he is.
I love this book as it was full of anecdotal scenarios which had me crying and laughing all at the same time. Tears running down my face while I had some gut wrenching laughing fits when going through their path. This story begins in edinburgh where they have a performance which is pivotal in their life, when there is a family of Muslim women sitting in the front row. This allows them to start reliving their past from being their mother's golden child to someone that the family wants to disown them and let them make their own mistakes. I found it hard to get the pronouns right when reading this as in my head it wanted to jump to him and her however by the end of the novel i had finally got it down. I was also so shocked about some of the things which they had to go through and racial stereotypes were constant;y linked to. I would recommend this to everyone as it gives a rare and real account of coming out to the world as the person you are.
