Q. I was curious to know more about your work as a poet, author, and artist. What themes do you touch on in your work? What is important to you in your art?

I think for me so much of my art has always been about the lived reality that I’m experiencing, and my people are experiencing. I remember as a teenager when I first started writing novels at 13, so many of the themes were the things that were happening in my day-to-day life. Specifically different forms of marginalizations and oppression that I was witnessing and, even before I had language around liberation and utopia building, there was a lot of that. So I feel like, historically, it has always been my way of processing what’s been happening and then, along the way, I learned how to utilize my art as either a way to mobilize people or kind of move us to organizing and building a collectively liberated world.

Q. How long have you been doing comedy? What got you started in that medium?

I started doing stand-up comedy really only a few years ago. I was finally in a space where I was ready to explore other art forms and I started doing stand-up comedy and absolutely loved it. It was so great. I felt like I was able to bring a lot of my different worlds together. And then October 7th happened [October 7, 2023 when the HAMAS-led attack on civilians ignited the war and humanitarian crisis in Gaza].

I wanted to include [the stand-up comedy] in my bio because I think a lot of times we think about the larger things that we lose along the way in terms of—especially with something like October 7th, or whenever we’re thinking of genocide, or acts of war, or really just large-scale crises—often we’re thinking about the number of people who have died, which is really really important. But also at the same time, for me, I think it is important to name the lived day-to-day things that we also lose along the way. So if it wasn’t for October 7th, I probably would be doing a lot more stand-up. And post-October 7th, I just [decided that] actually, I am just going to withhold this comedy until we live in a world with a free Falasteen.

Q. With your approach to comedy, do you approach it differently than your other forms of creative expression? Does comedy help you cope or process in the same way that the other forms do?

I write a lot of non-fiction. I even write young adult fantasy. I write a lot of different things. But with poetry, in particular, you don’t need to maintain a plot. There is no structure that you have to abide by—you get to just be in that moment. So I feel like, in a lot of ways, stand-up was really similar to that. I think where the main difference with that was with stand-up I was able to allow these things to move through my body on a stage.

So post October 7th, I haven’t done stand-up, but one of the things I have done is, starting last year, is I did a one-person show. It’s a one-hour show—the easiest way to describe it is it’s Yaffa in the living room/kitchen, away from everyone as a queer and trans Palestinian in the midst of genocide. And it’s a show that kind of moves within the extreme realms of different emotions that we’re all experiencing on a daily basis. And so you can go from immense joy to immense grief in an instant . . . You can be excited about something and then devastated about the same thing or a different thing—and it’s just like this roller coaster of emotions.

Obviously with stand-up, the focus is going to be on the laughter piece; it’s about the comedy. Whereas with the show, I am able to kind of experience a wider range of emotions. But I feel like stand-up was a really beautiful stepping stone into that.

Q. The theme of displacement has been a prominent one in your work. Can you share a bit about what it means to you to be displaced?

Displacement has been a huge part of my life. I was displaced really early on and then continuously displaced. Usually, when I start with my story, I always start with my grandparents’ generation with their displacement versus my first displacement.

Because I was born maybe less than six months post my parents being displaced from Kuwait post the Gulf War. And I like starting it before I was even born because displacement is one of those things—and a lot of different forms of trauma and a lot of forms of injustices are similar—they don’t really start when we show up, right. They’re there. They’re impacting us.

The world that I was born into is a completely different world than the world that my oldest sister was born into, for example. Where she was born two years prior to the Gulf War. So just in terms of stability, in terms of access to resources—almost everything was different between just the two of us and we’re 3 ½ years apart. So within those 3 ½ years, my parents’ entire world shifted. And I was born in a very different world than she was born in. And it’s like that for all of my sisters who were born after me. And so, even though we were all displaced, our displacement ended up looking very different. Even as I went off on my own—I left home when I was 16, 17—and since then I’ve lived in six other countries. Then my experience with that became very different than my sisters’ because that’s not their lived reality. And so, for me, it’s always been a big part of my life.

I am really grateful for the last 10 years of my life where within each of the forms of displacement or move, I’ve been able to reclaim a lot of things around my heritage and who I am as a person, who my community is, and really allow myself to balance that out. So prior to a lot of that, there was almost like this desperation for having place. I would go from place to place almost begging for acceptance, for any kind of “Okay, I can be here, I can stay here.”

[In] the last 10 years, I have really learned to move toward a place where home is no longer a specific physical place somewhere in the world; it’s just wherever I am. And that’s been really helpful especially with the level of travel I do.

Q. Can you share what it means to you to have a sense of “place”?

This concept of like, “I’m somewhere and this is where I belong,” that didn’t really happen until last year. In August, I went to Falasteen for the first time. I had never been there. I wasn’t born there. And it’s been about 60 years since anyone from my immediate family has been able to go. So my grandparents have not been back. My parents have not been back. In fact, my parents don’t remember it because they were children when they left.

I think in my head I thought as soon as I crossed the border, I would immediately feel like I was at home and be like everything is different now. But that didn’t necessarily happen in that way. What did happen though was when I did go to where my dad is from, it felt so different from any other place I’ve ever lived in. Because it was walking down the street knowing that I am Indigenous to this land. And for the first time in my life, I was not a settler. And that’s not really an experience I had ever had or that I could really have in the vast majority of the world. Because everywhere else I am always hypervigilant about what is my role in being on this land. And being really really careful of like what is my relationship to the Indigenous folx of this land, what is my role in terms of stewarding the land—there’s so much of that within the role of being a settler on stolen land that I am always consciously thinking of. And being in Falasteen was the first place where that’s not what I was thinking about. That was not taking up 100% of my mental capacity. Being in Falasteen was the first time where it was like, “Wait, I can just be a person for a minute. I can just exist here.”

Q. What does it mean to you to be part of a community event like DBIWP? What is important about having events like DBIWP?

As soon as I found out about this event, I was like I just want to be there, for me as a person. Which is not something that I usually get to think about . . . Usually I’m thinking, like, okay how do I make this related to the work that I’m doing? How is it related to collective liberation? How is it related to my organizing?

So when I first heard [about DBIWP], I was like I just want to be there as a human. As an Indigenous, queer, and trans person. I just want to be in that space. I don’t need to say anything. I don’t need to do anything. I just want to be surrounded by that energy, period. There are so few spaces that are for Indigenous folx to really center queerness, transness, Two-Spirit folx . . . I don’t know any other place that really does that on a broader Indigenous scope.

As a visibly trans person, when I walk into any room, that room can never be the same, period. It just, it cannot. But, for me, there’s that added layer of it can stop there or now it can be a pathway to utilize that space to move resources, to mobilize people, to build some kind of organizing pathway, to build infrastructure—there’s so many different directions that it can go in and, to me, that’s work that is going to move us to collective liberation. So I feel like a lot of the other events that I am aware of are really just focused on that first part of how we just exist but I love that with this event, it is also taking that second step where like, yes, our existence is resistance, but now what? Where are we going with this? What is it that we are trying to build?

When I think of Indigenous, queer, trans, and Two-Spirit folx, I think of the most powerful people in the world, right. Like, to me, we’re the people who should be defining what liberation looks like and what our societies can look like in the future. I want people at the forefront of those experiences and realities coming up with that vision. And ultimately a lot of the people most impacted by things are the people who are the ones who know how to move us in those directions more than anybody else. It is kind of a missed opportunity if we don’t take that next step because I know so may people are excited to go on that next step. They are looking for that next step. Where do we actually go from here?

And I feel like with this event, it balances that out really well. Let’s share space, let’s really celebrate one another. Let’s celebrate our realities and our existence. And also, where are we going?

You are doing a poetry reading during the event. What do you hope those attending your poetry reading DBIWP walk away with from the experience?

Being in that space, I would want my poetry and everything I say to really just allow people to feel seen. There is so much power in poetry and other forms of art where we are able to make very specific experiences almost universal. So many of us go through the same thing, but there is this assumption that everyone is on their own. And I feel like art allows us to break down some of those binaries and some of those barriers that tell us that we are all alone. So I would want people to really recognize that they’re not alone.

I love trying to send the message to people of I see you. I am hearing you. I am witnessing everything that you are. But then also adding that second part—I witness you, now what? What can you do for collective liberation when you’re witnessed versus when you’re not witnessed? . . . There is always an “and” to it. The conversation doesn’t end. And I feel like I get to do that within my poetry and with my art.

I like introducing chaos into space. People have certain expectations of what something looks like and sounds like a feels like . . . When chaos is introduced, it is kind of like a cold plunge. It resets your nervous system. And you’re no longer holding onto all of the beliefs and the things that are getting in your way potentially because you’re no longer thinking about the impossibility of things because you had that nervous system reset. All of a sudden, possibilities are real again. Something you held onto your entire life all of a sudden might not make sense anymore. It leaves space for that. I think chaos is a really powerful tool when it comes to mobilizing and organizing because a lot of the work that those systems have done is conditioned us into very specific ways of thinking. And as long as we are holding onto those specific ways of thinking, it means that we actually can’t move forward with collective liberation . . .

I’m just honored to be a part of this and all the events and everybody’s journey where I just get to be there. I am the person who throws someone into a cold plunge. What they do beyond that cold plunge is really up to them.

Q. You spoke a bit about wanting to be part of this event just as a human—being part of the event, being part of the space, being part of the energy. What do you hope to walk away with as someone participating in the event?

I really appreciate this questions because I think it will get me to think about it even more and really set some intentionality for this. I believe that rest happens in community, not away from community. I talk about how the capitalist version of rest is working 50 weeks a year. You hate everyone. It’s destroying you. But then you go for a two week vacation and you’re supposed to come back and do it all over again. I find even within organizing spaces, we’re still holding onto that idea that to rest is to step away from everything. That can work for physical rest, but when it comes to rest across the other dimensions (emotionally, and mentally, and spiritually), to me, that happens within community which is part of why I do the work that I do and why I go into so many communities and have these conversations because those become spaces of rest for me. They mobilize me in different ways. They hold me accountable in different ways. They refresh my soul.

Usually when I am resting in community, it’s my event. With this, I am sharing poetry, but I am very much more so a participant within the space, so I am hoping to be on the receiving end of that rest without having to do the labor of organizing the entire thing. The other part I am hoping for is witnessing some of the incredible things that other people are doing on their journeys toward collective liberation.

I would love to witness other people doing the work that they are doing and then that would give me new ideas and ways to support things that are happening. Whenever I meet someone who is doing incredible work, I am like okay cool, how do I support you? How do we make sure that you get to continue doing this? And by “I,” I don’t necessarily mean in this physical body. I mean “I” as in my communities—this broader ecosystem and how do we merge our ecosystems to strengthen one another. Realistically, none of us are going to get there without everybody else. It’s going to be a lot of movements together. It’s going to be a lot of people from a lot of backgrounds building a revolution. It can’t be a single cause, it can’t even just be a couple of causes—it has to be all these causes together. So I am looking forward to just witnessing that with other people and hopefully being able to support others.