The Queer Arabs

We’re back with an episode with Alia, Ellie, and Nadia talking about: – An incredible show Nadia saw called LINES about the interconnected histories of Palestine, Uganda, and the UK through prison systems  – Participating in Palestine protests and college encampments around us (and how college students are doing a better job of building a movement as they go than most of us) – Why protests and direct action can sometimes be *good* for mental health, actually – Nadia’s organizing work with @dancers_for_palestine – Anti-BDS laws, anti-protest laws, and anti-bail fund laws across the US – Alia goes to @laylitparty…

Hannah Moushabeck is a second-generation Palestinian American author, editor, and book marketer. She is the author of Homeland: My Father Dreams of Palestine, a children’s book about three girls who experience Palestine through bedtime stories. She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts on the homelands of the Pocumtuc and Nipmuc Nations. Hannah talks about growing up in  New York, Massachusetts, and the UK while her family ran an Arab independent publishing house. She discusses how representation in children’s books has and hasn’t changed since her childhood, with a clear uptick in queer stories but very few Palestinian stories. Hannah recounts the variety…

Yaffa is a trans displaced Palestinian activist, engineer, death and birthing doula, peer support specialist, and artist. They are the Executive Director of Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity and recently released their book of poetry Blood Orange, raising funds for queer and trans Palestinian work.  In this episode, Yaffa reads a poem from Blood Orange, and we reflect on the cognitive dissonance of diaspora, wondering “which cut from your paycheck killed your cousin.” Yaffa discusses their work in peer support, and how we can find alternatives to an individualized, compartmentalized, escapist framing of self care, witnessing each other’s…

Lamya H., author of Hijab Butch Blues, joined us for a wonderful episode! Lamya talks about the line between invisibility and hypervisibility as a brown person in hijab in the US, alternatively overlooked or policed. She discusses her path into Queer Muslim community as well as her mixed experiences in both Arab and Desi spaces as someone born in a South Asian country who grew up in the Gulf. We also talk about the differences between culturally- and religiously-specific queer communities and the issues with policing borders around identity.  They also mention how quickly Queer Muslim communities have become more…

Finlay Sarafa McHale is a queer Iraqi/Chaldean-American clinical social worker currently facilitating a free peer support group for queer SWANA people. They joined us for a wonderful conversation about how mental healthcare can be a tool for political liberation rather than means of detaching from it.  Finlay discusses censorship and Zionism in the mental health field, the challenges of developing culturally responsive practices in a profession with white-centric roots, and the myth of therapy as apolitical. They explain how traditionally strict expectations of “non-disclosure” regarding therapists’ personal or political perspectives can widen the power gap between therapist and client and…

Leila Mire is a PhD candidate in Performance Studies at UC Berkeley, as well as a dancer, choreographer, organizer, and sometimes disorganized person. She researches Palestinian dance and the role of dance in US and Israeli cultural imperialism. We discuss the misleading implications of certain “coexistence art” which locates interpersonal prejudice as the source of conflict while deliberately glossing over systemic inequality. As Leila puts it, while art can build bridges, a bridge built on uneven ground is just a dysfunctional seesaw.  We also talk about Martha Graham, cultural appropriation as a foundation of US modern dance, the Cold War-era…

We got to have Amina Shareef Ali back for another episode!  She was on the podcast all the way back in January 2021 (episode 147), and we now had a wonderful conversation about her upcoming album, In the Dark (Awake of Course), volume 2. In this episode, Amina describes the throughlines of the tracks, who was involved in the making of the album (shout out to Radical Folksonomy!), and the parts of her life this album draws from. The tracks explore themes of heartbreak and redemption, and living and loving boldly with integrity.  Cristy Road made the album cover, seen…

We were joined by the wonderful Bijhan Agha, a Persian-American author and creator living in Uruguay. Bijhan talked about her wonderful creation, Kobra Olympus.  Kobra is a trans, lesbian hijabi superhero with adventures that can be accessed and followed by you all if you get the comic when it comes out!  In this episode, Bijhan and Ellie dive in to some comic book history and discuss some of the nods to some older work by Kobra, as well as the many factors that make the Kobra comic so unique. We also talk about what led Bijhan and her partner to…

We start off this episode by asking an AI to write a script for our podcast and doing a reading (did the AI get it right?) Then we talk about our actual lives. We discuss the legal attacks on trans rights in several Southern US states, plus some random transphobes at Waffle House. We commiserate about the challenges and doubts we’ve been encountering surrounding our respective careers. We also talk about how (queer) bar culture and etiquette have shifted due to dating apps, Buc-ees, squirrels, and the new Zelda game.

( See a walkthrough of Noor’s exhibit here! Hayati – My Life/My Love ) Noor Aldayeh is a visual artist from Los Angeles, California. She is an Honors Film and Media student at Emory University minoring in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality studies, and acts as a student photographer for the Office of Belonging Community and Justice at the university. Our conversation centered around Noor’s thesis project ​​”Hayati (حياتي) – My Life / My Love,” an archive of queer, Middle Eastern and North African women and gender non-conforming-individuals across the US photographed alongside their personal safe spaces.  Noor discusses what drew…