Category: Uncategorized

I turn 39 on January 4 of 2017. This will be my last birthday in my 30s! If you’d like to spoil me, here is a list of things I’d love:

A donation to RAWI in any denomination (tax-deductible!) Click here.

This t-shirt in a 3XL

These giant scarab earrings:

These boots in a US Mens 7 Women’s 9:

This print: 

This rug:

A Sephora gift certificate

A group of us have asked PEN America to decline funding from the Israeli Embassy for its PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature. PEN responded that they don’t do boycotts. Here is a letter I just sent to them:

Dear Suzanne (and Jacob, and Colm),

PEN’s egregious response to our call to reject funding from the Israeli government is unacceptable. We are not asking for a boycott. We are asking that a government that has a well-documented record of abuses of human rights (see Amnesty Inernational and Human Rights Watch), that holds discriminatory practices against its citizens and the citizens it occupies, that incarcerates and kills children, illegally settles on land, arrests adults and children who protest against its military occupation and holds them in administrative detention, tortures prisoners, confiscates and forcibly removes people from their homes, be excluded from funding a festival meant to celebrate world voices. We are asking that a government that has historically silenced writer’s voices– see Israel’s history of book-burning and school book banning, for example– be excluded from funding a festival meant to advocate for freedom of expression. Claims that Palestinians are deserving of apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and silencing because of the actions of Hamas and militants are unfounded and propagandist. I have worked with PEN as a judge in 2014, an interviewer, and have twice been a guest of the festival– in 2010 and 2013– and I will not stand by as PEN American continues to ignore the plight of Palestinian journalists, using fabricated affiliations with Hamas as an excuse, and as PEN American actively allows the Israeli government to sponsor events by writers when other funding could be procured. Legitimizing a government that is in violation of UN resolutions is unacceptable in general, let alone by an organization that is meant to defend writers who are endangered because of their work. PEN American’s claim that it does not align with or “do” boycotts is dishonest: PEN does not receive money from the Chinese embassy, does it? The fact that PEN actively publicizes and defends writers who are struggling under regimes the US government is at odds with is suspicious and unethical. PEN either needs to take a proper stand against censorship, incarceration, and the silencing of ALL voices, or it must accept that it is not at all what it claims to be.

I’ve been working with wonderful student editors to revamp the Normal School literary magazine’s online presence. I’m very proud of the work we’re doing. Take a look! 

My heart is with Gaza.

One of my essays, about a conversation I had with my son, is collected here in this new NYT anthology of Lives essays. You can read more about it here.

At the gym pool today, I saw an elderly fellow fat femme. Perhaps in her eighties, she was wearing a swimsuit with bling all along the bust.
She approached me in the steamroom.
“Where’d you get your bathing suit?” she said. Mine is a halter swimsuit with pineapple print.
Me, sheepishly: “A store called…Forever 21. Do you know it?”
She: “Oh, yes. That’s a good one.”

I’ve written about the Boston bomber; about the US government’s attempts to deport my brother, which kept him in jail for weeks, and about Israel detaining me– a US citizen– and denying me entry in March of 2012, but the essay of mine that has sparked the most impassioned responses is one about…

Bellydancing.

The volume of the published response to the essay– a personal opinion piece– was surprising. Guys in the Washington Post and the Atlantic wrote whitesplanations about how cultural mixing is a good thing, other men on racist blogs called me a moron, Daily News Egypt published a response by a non-Egyptian, non-Arab woman. G Willow Wilson wrote in defense of me (and since she’s not an angry woman of color, her argument is being touted as reasonable and sane), Muslimah Media Watch did a roundtable about the piece, and some dancers are saying they need to do better. 

There were amazing, supportive, beautiful emails from Arab-American sister writers.

There were also violently angry emails & tweets that, in a typically sexist and fatphobic way, criticized my appearance and my size.

I have been called a fat camel and a hairy ape and a dirty terrorist ever since I moved to the US at the age of 13, so– I’m used to it. But call some people out for wearing genie pants & makeup that’s supposed to make them look Arab, and they go nuts. 

In my essay, I historicized the appropriation of bellydancing, but I naively thought people knew about the British empire, about US imperialism, about how these have fucked the Middle East for centuries.

And bellydancing is one of many appropriations… it can be argued that it’s so low on the scale. I mean, dancing? But look at how people are reacting to it. What happens when we start talking about Israel appropriating land illegally and settling on it? About America’s colonization and its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the effects of those wars, about the current drone campaigns, and on and on?

I’ve read the following arguments, all of which ignore the systematic racism by the dominant culture:

-“So black women can’t be ballerinas?” If black women were part of a dominant culture that had colonized Europe starting at the Italian renaissance, and later colonized France and Russia, and if, after all that, black ballerinas danced in bikini tops, then yes, this argument would work. But it doesn’t.

-“I’m Egyptian and I love white bellydancers!” Good for you. Come live in America for 23 years, have people throw lit cigarettes at you and make fun of your mother’s accent and sneer at your muhajjaba aunt and try to deport your brother, see a white woman be applauded in a bar while dancing to “Walk Like An Egyptian” in a “Nefertiti hat,” and if, after that, you still feel the same way, cool, write your own opinion piece about it.

-“You’re an idiot! America is a melting pot!” Yes, America pretends to be a melting pot, but this means everyone has to adhere to a cultural norm, and in the process, minorities are negated and further made invisible.

-“It’s appreciation, not appropriation!” No. Please read this for more about appreciation vs appropriation.

-“But Korean Tacos! Mixing cultures is delicious!” Again, if the person making and serving those tacos is from a dominant culture that, for centuries, colonized Korea and Mexico, and then served those tacos to you in a Conical Asian hat and a Mariachi outfit, with a bikini top underneath, then, yeah, this argument would work. Again, it doesn’t.

-“You’re a racist!” Please, save us both time, watch this, and learn how that’s not possible.

-“You’re appropriating White culture by using a computer right now!” I can’t even honor this level of idiocy & entitlement with a response.

-“If you don’t like our multiculturalism, go back to your own country!” Umm, doesn’t multiculturalism imply an acceptance of people from different cultures? Also: I was born in Chicago. This is my country. I know it’s hard, but Ay-rabs are Americans, too. Also: okay, let’s say I humor you and try to go back to another country: Whoops, I don’t have one, because I’m a descendent of Palestinians.

Many other arguments kept centering white people in the discussion, asking what they’re allowed or not allowed to do. Ultimately, that’s not the discussion I want to have. And one person can’t stop anyone from doing anything: white women will continue to bellydance. What I’m asking is, when you are part of the dominant culture and live in a country that subsidizes the theft of land & resources from Arab people; in a country that supports & financially aids Arab governments that silence and even imprison democratic protesters; in a country where kids don’t feel safe telling schoolmates that they’re Arab-American– maybe think twice before you put on some genie pants and kohl and call yourself Samirah Layali?

How difficult is it to examine one’s own privilege without calling the person asking you to do so a douche bag? Evidently, it is very, very difficult.

At the end of the day, it’s not belly dance that people are protecting. It’s the right to take anything they want and not be criticized for it.

I’m thrilled that something I wrote on my dining table in a few hours, one I thought a couple hundred people would read, has sparked such a discussion. I refuse to sit quietly in the margins & only speak when I can “calmly” educate & teach. I’m fucking angry, y’all, at decades and centuries of dehumanization, and belly dancing is just the tip of it– hate mail be damned.

I chatted with Other People with Brad Listi Podcast this week. It was super fun, partly because I’d never done a podcast interview before & got to be myself (=swear like a sailor). Topics discussed: Sex-positive dads, Palestine, Singing in falsetto around the house, Racism, Flâneurs. Interview starts at 6:32. Give it a listen here. 

Outside the restrooms, each door bore the standard gender symbol denoting male (♂) and female (♀). She stood in front of them and said, “When I come out, I will need you to write something. Please get the notebook,” and disappeared into the women’s room.

When she finally emerged, she stood in between the two wooden doors and shouted, “See how the female symbol is docile, upright? It stands there, arms akimbo, as if asking, How can I be of use to you? How can I comfort you, help you, give of myself to further you? Meanwhile, the male symbol is virile, a penis pointing outward, always exploring, moving forward, the arrow saying, I am busy, I am important, I am on my way to conquering something, someone, somewhere.”

I have a new short story out in Booth, about a young woman who goes to Seattle to intern for a bad feminist. It’s called “How Can I Be of Use to You?” Read it here.