Ep. 43: Hood Wellness with Tamela Julia Gordon, Pt. 2 — Louiza "Weeze" Doran
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Show Notes :
In this two part conversation, I talk with Tamela Julia Gordon, a writer and editor from New York. Tamela Julia Gordon’s book, Hood Wellness: Tales of Communal Care from People Who Drowned on Dry Land has been met with critical acclaim, earning a starred Kirkus Review. Tamela’s currently working on her second book and splitting her time between Harlem and Miami.
Tamela and I explore layers centered on Community Care, Authenticity and staying rooted in the truth of your work, and honoring your community as well as your capacity as we navigate these aspects. We also talk about the need to be within community with those who see, hear, and honor us.
Tune in to hear all about:
The importance of community care
Tamela shares her journey of writing 'Hood Wellness' and the process of reconciling her own experiences.
The conversation highlights the limitations of anti-racism work and the importance of authentic and community-centered approaches to activism and self-care.
Promoting a book while maintaining integrity and authenticity can be challenging.
Working at your own capacity in activism.
Resources:
Order Tamela’s Book: Hood Wellness: Tales of Communal Care from People Who Drowned on Dry Land
Tamela’s Instagram: @shewritestolive
Connect & Support :
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1948 to Freedom: From Yaffa
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, queer, palestinians, trans, palestine, settler colonialism, specifically, happening, lived, displaced, potentially, years, support, west bank, weaponized, write, started, weaponization, spaces, palestinian
SPEAKERS
Speaker 1: Weeze Speaker 2: Yaffa
Speaker 1 00:00
Hey y'all, and welcome to this episode of 1948 to freedom. Today, we have someone that I'm very excited to introduce yaffa, yaffa, thank you for being here with us. Yaffa. Would you like to say hello to the people? Hey Everyone? Yeah, I'm I'm really really always I'm honored anytime somebody gives me their time just especially in in the midst of right holding the duality of of your own experience and the the genocide that Palestinians are experiencing and also, you know, sharing your expertise and your energy and your your soul with us. I'm I'm deeply grateful that you're here. As as you all know, listeners will will give you the full blurby. On on Yaffa in the in the show notes. But within the context of this conversation, before we dive in, what would you like the people to know about you? Because I know, I know, there's so much to know, but just in this moment,
Speaker 2 01:04
there's so much I can keep going forever. But I think the most important things that I would like to highlight right now is that I'm a queer and trans indigenous displaced Palestinian. My displacement has been far and why my family has been displaced due to several different wars, both in Palestine and then the Gulf War. And then I was actually living south of in southern Syria when the Syrian revolution started. And so have been in various different wars. I've lived in nine countries. And currently I live out on Aloni land, which is Oakland, California. And then professionally, I'm a death doula. I'm also the executive director of the Muslim alliance for sexual and gender diversity. So really centering queer and trans Muslims is, is a huge part of the day to day work that I do. And I'm also an artist,
Speaker 1 01:59
you actually did that it very succinctly, for how many things? So, before we get into, you know, the work that you're really doing and how it intersects, you know, with some of the conversation we had earlier, and the artistry, I really want to touch on the fact that you said you've lived in nine countries through several wars, and it can I share your age? Yes. Okay. Within 31 years of life, the reason that I really want to drive this point home is because I think a lot of people have a misconception that, oh, this just all started on October 7, like, right, they there's so much context missing, unfortunately for much of the West, and specifically for Americans. And also just a general lack of understanding around what Imperialism is what settler colonialism is. You know, Americans especially and Canadians are only now starting in the last few years to grasp what that means, due to, you know, a wake up around indigenous folks here in the Americas. And those conversations, but if you could speak a little bit to that. And also just to the reality of being a displaced Palestinian and a little bit of the context,
Speaker 2 03:20
I love that you're starting with, like, even just what is settler colonialism and having people start from there, in a lot of the conversations I've been having, when people are like, tell us about Palestine and the history of that, and I'm like, no, no, I need you to just learn what is settler colonialism? And what is colonialism? Like? What are the differences between genocide and ethnic cleansing? I need you to go back to basics, right? Pretend you're in like the fifth grade, and you're memorizing, like, different definitions. Because without that context, nothing makes sense. So I think for me, it's it's so interesting of how it's been different wars, and yet, all of it is so interconnected. So like you mentioned, I'm 31 years old. And so I am the, I guess, the third generation since this began, right. And so my grandparents were both born in, or I guess all four born in Palestine. So my dad soccer from Yaffa. My mom's side are from Janine. Janine is where the largest refugee camp exists, where there's currently a lot of attacks that are happening in the West Bank, that aren't covered as much as should be probably. And then my dad's side, though, are from Yaffa. And Yaffa, was one of the very first areas that was attacked and terrorized in a multitude of ways. I still remember very clearly, I think, probably when I was around, like six years old, and just having a random conversation with my grandmother, and she was like, I really wish that I had stayed in school longer. And I was like, oh, like, you know, like, why did why did you Not and she was like, oh, because they would shoot us. And even at the age of six, we understood that, right? We understood everything that was happening to our families and the displacement that we're we were experiencing. And so I don't share that to be like, Oh, wow, look, as a six year old, it was so traumatizing, because it really wasn't, right, because we had known that like, we woke up into consciousness, knowing the struggle that we were a part of right, and the injustice that had existed across the different generations. And it wasn't until later on that I learned a lot more of the history of that actually Zionist at the time, this is before the State of Israel was created. This is before 1948. Basically, they would stay by schools, and places similar to that, to really terrify Palestinians to get them to leave. Right, and I just read something of that it was about 98% of the population and Yafa, that were forcibly displaced by 1948. And so my grandparents were part of that first generation. So their parents ended up moving, the vast majority of them ended up moving to Annapolis to the West Bank. But a few of them ended up moving to Gaza. And so some of my great uncle's I think two of them ended up moving in their families into visit, they were a little bit older than the rest of my. And this is specifically my paternal grandfather's site, where they were a bit older. And so they went and settled there. And I tell people, when they ask if I have family and friends, I'm like I do but we're distance. What I mean by word distant is that there's no way for us to go see them. And there's almost no way for them to come see us. Like I've met one of those great uncle's kids. So one of my second cousins once. But even just looking at like the list of the individuals who have been murdered in the last three weeks, right, who have been killed in this ongoing genocide. There's at least 20 to 30 names that I recognize, right from just those families of people I've never met of people who don't know me. And so that was kind of, unfortunately, the beginning of that displacement. Afterwards, they made it almost impossible to continue living in Palestine, making it illegal for Palestinians to be educated, for access to work. And so slowly, both sides of my family ended up moving to Kuwait, which is where my parents ended up being raised and where they grew up and ended up going to college and then ended up meeting after college and then ended up getting married. And then the Gulf War. And what most people don't realize, after the Gulf War, even though you would you, you would think more people would would know this, especially in what is known as the US, right, because the US was a part of the Gulf War. And yet most people don't realize that about 2 million Palestinians were expelled from Kuwait afterwards. And so I always tell people of, even before I was born, I was being expelled from a country into another. And so my parents moved, for the very first time to Jordan, which is where I ended up being born. And since then, it just kind of continued, we ended up moving to Arizona, for my dad to get his PhD. Education has been such a huge part of my family's legacy on both sides of the family, specifically, because it was illegal because you were going to get shot if you went to school. And so the vast majority of family members, at very, very, very least have a bachelor's degree, most have PhDs or master's. And even between me and my sisters, we're kind of we're highly educated in that way, but less because it's, we really want this piece of paper and more of like, this is part of our resistance. This is part of our legacy as Palestinians and honoring my grandparents who couldn't continue that education, and then ended up moving after 911 It's interesting, you know, with everything going on, it almost feels a lot like how it felt right after 911. And that was only nine years old when 911 happened. And yet I still remember. I remember it so clearly in terms of how people were reacting to us, although I always tell people of our mosque in Arizona was vandalized two weeks before 911 and vandalized two weeks after, to really highlight of like, this wasn't new people in Arizona were mistreating us way longer than that. But it really changed everything. In the sense of prior to 911. We used to go to the protests, for Palestine, for Ireland, for Kashmir. For so many areas around the world. We were constantly at protests. We're constantly organizing and doing things like I remember being sticks and being on the streets right and carrying a flag that's bigger than me. And not then being seven and not even knowing like how to pronounce like things like Kashmir, right? We're really understanding what Ireland is and so on and so forth. And yet, but we were always there we were constantly showing up for other people in the 911 happened and people disappeared, right? Like community members just started disappearing, the FBI talked to almost everyone that FBI came to our house, right? I being a nine year old was talking to them with my mom. And this feels a lot like that. But due to all of that, we ended up moving to Canada afterwards, which, unfortunately, was not better in any way, shape or form, unfortunately, right? I wish I could be like, yeah, Canada was so much better. And we were treated so much nicer. But that literally was just not the case, it was very much the same thing. Except now we didn't have the community that we had built over a few years. And so we ended up moving back to Jordan, again, basically, for the second time, where my grandparents had settled by then. And then, as I got older, right, when I was 17, I left home ended up moving to southern Syria, North Jordan, and then went to college in Massachusetts, lived in Switzerland for a bit, went back to New England, lived in Hong Kong, lived in Malaysia, lived in Turkey. More in New England, lived in Northern Ireland the last couple of years. And now back, back here. And, you know, whenever folks ask us, like, you know, where are my sisters and things like that? I'm like, which ones? Right, because we're also scattered all over the world. My aunts or uncles and uncles are scattered all over the world, my cousins are scattered all over the world. And that just kind of the legacy of that displacement. And I've always actually had a challenge with like even saying, I'm like part of the diaspora, because I feel like even saying you're part of the Diaspora claims roots to where you've settled. And we've never had that. I don't really have that here. So I, like so many others, right, feel like it's it just to the next place, potentially, and the one after it. Until we're able to go back home?
Speaker 1 12:02
Can I can I take us back to something you said, because I really want this point to land with people. So you said that you were distant from family because you couldn't go there. And they couldn't come here. And I think that that's really that I would love for you to talk about that a little bit more in detail, because I don't think that people fully grasp. Right, even when you're saying like, I don't know that I consider myself part of the Diaspora because I don't have roots, right. There is no sovereignty in the reality that that any oppressed people experienced. Right, but specifically Palestinians. Yeah. Right. There's, there's no sovereignty in that. So it's not like, oh, we just didn't talk to family. Because I think that people be like, oh, yeah, they're distant because they're on the other side of the world like, no, that were very intentional policies in place. And so if you could, if you could speak to that a little bit more for people?
Speaker 2 12:58
Yeah, absolutely. I think most people don't realize that Palestine, or Palestinians in particular, do not control any borders. We don't control any of them. So that's a The borders are either controlled by what is known as Israel or Egypt. The West Bank, even though it borders Jordan, the border is patrolled by Israeli armed forces. It's not controlled by people in the West Bank. So wherever those family members are, without any kind of like global North passport, there's almost no way to go and potentially even visit, it's It's hard enough in the West Bank, let alone Gaza. Right where Egypt and Israel will almost never let you in without a global North passport. And even then, the chances of them not letting you in are so large, right, even going on like a humanitarian aid force or on a volunteer trip or whatever it is, it is so hard for you to get inside of there. And so for us being so displaced and constantly hopping around the passport, I currently carries a Jordanian passport. With a Jordanian passport, it is impossible to enter Gaza it is almost impossible to enter the West Bank. And so, and with people living in the Gaza, in particular, it is almost impossible for them to leave. The only times they have been able to leave is usually whenever there's been large scale medical crisis, and then every once in a while Egypt will let them out or otherwise they have to wait years, and usually most will die before a permit comes in from Israel. Right and so for us not being there and them being there. With us not being global North citizens and not them again, not being able to ever leave. It's almost impossible to go and actually visit one another. I always tell people one of the differences between Palestine and a lot of other places is that For a lot of other places, you can go and die in your homeland. What I tell people is that we can't go to die in our homeland. It's not about that our lives are in danger. Once we cross a border, it's literally that we can't cross that border, which is very different than a lot of other places. A lot of other places your life is in jeopardy once you go back home. But for us, we can't go back home to die, to be killed, right to be a part of this. And I think a lot of people don't really recognize those things. And so in terms of the heads of family members, and even the West Bank, that distance just gets built over generations, right. So these are my grandfather's siblings. And so when my grandfather was alive, he would call them every once in a while, they would call us every once in a while, we would talk. And we were close in the sense of like, we know each other a little bit here and there, right with the older generations. But that's kind of a of like, you know, okay, this person has so many kids, right? The kids are doing this, this person got married, just those high level updates, but generation after generation, that distance gets larger and larger. And so my grandfather used to talk to his his his siblings, until one of them died from natural causes. And I believe that other still alive, potentially, at this point, I don't know. Yeah, and my grandfather knew all of the kids, my dad knows some of those kids. Some of my dad's siblings know more of those cousins. But as it trickles down to me, or now with my sister's kids, my sister's kids don't know anything about that, right? Even one of my younger sisters, and this was so heartwarming when it happened about a week ago, where she messaged me, and she's 23 She was born in the US. So she was born in Arizona, and she messaged me, and she was like, Can I have a conversation with you about our family and Palestine? Because I don't know the I don't know that history. And so it's beautiful that people are remembering things. And we're not losing that with generations. But just inherently when you force people apart, when all the systemic barriers, to not be able to not even just see each other but even calling into us. Right? Where it was like astronomical costs, right for people there and for people calling. And things like that, have just over time, right? People move forward and live their lives and and we know they're there, they know we're here. Well, I don't know if they know I'm here, right. But they know that my parents aren't Jordan, they know that we're always connected. And also, we're all dreaming of the day when we get to physically be reconnected, on the land that is ours.
Speaker 1 17:54
Yeah. Before I ask the next question, for the listeners, I really want them to understand that everything that you're talking about, right, the barriers to entry and exit the need for permission, those are exact examples of Israel being an apartheid state, because there's a lot of pushback, and there's a lot of games being played with language, to try to lessen the political atrocities that absolutely have been what I call a very intentional, slow and steady genocide, right, leading up to, you know, this particular escalation. And so that is a that is a perfect example. I know that's been a hard one for people to fully grasp because, you know, that's unless you're familiar with all of the policies and and exactly what what it means to be an apartheid state. That can be hard. But but that is an example of, of the government known as Israel being being an apartheid state. Well, thank you for sharing all of that context with us. I think it's really important for people to understand that. I would love if we could shift gears just a little bit. Cuz if so many things I want to talk to you about, but I want to make sure we create enough space. So a lot of your work, obviously, aside for being an artist, which we'll talk about and you know, the the creative side of you, but a lot of your work is really rooted in supporting and providing resources and healing. And we were talking about before, right somatic healing to people and specifically to queer and trans Muslims. So first, I want you to talk a little bit about your work and the importance of that. And then I've got a couple follow ups but but I'll let you start there.
Speaker 2 20:00
Yeah, absolutely. So I've been working with queer and trans Muslims. And I want to say about 2016. And at first it was just through my peer support practice and also peer support specialists. And that's kind of how I got into death doula work, birthing doula work. And at the time, I realized that there was nobody supporting specifically trans unaccompanied minors coming in from Syria. And they were literally children, right, usually between the ages of 12 and 16. And they were coming to this new country, they were queer and trans. And they had no other Muslim community around them. And by Muslim, I don't necessarily mean like a religious practice. I'm talking about the cultural, the racial, the nationalistic elements of everything that could fit within that. And so I would qualify, like, Palestinian like Christians as a part of that, right? Like, it's really that proximity versus a practice. But realizing of like, they had no one, right, they were working with only individuals within the broader medical system, and the mental health system who were actively really Islamophobic at the same time. And so recognizing that I kind of just accidentally started doing that work, and would support individuals one on one. And it took a really long time outside of that, to actually find any kind of queer and trans Muslim community. The vast majority of us have never actually met anyone else around us, who's also queer and trans, in queer, trans and Muslim. There's this complete like a erasure of, of our identities. And even to this day, there's still an erasure of that we exist, that these identities can intersect and that they do exist. And that eraser happens from every pathway from just everybody, more or less within the LGBTQ community, largely right within some of the Muslim community within other religious communities just across the board, that eraser is always there. And so it wasn't until I found out about MASGD, the Muslim alliance for sexual and gender diversity, which has been around since 2011. And really just started as a space for queer trans Muslims and their partners to come together. And it started just as a yearly retreat, and slowly it kind of grew. And the last time they did it, it had, I believe it was over 170 people coming to this to this retreat. Since COVID, began, they moved everything virtual. And that was kind of when I became more involved with MASGD, just first as a participant. And then about a year year and a half ago, became the Executive Director of MASGD as the first executive director that's been hired by the by the organization. And I like to mention that because we are an organization that is formed by the community. So everyone who's a part of MASGD is also a participant in MASGD, versus it's, it's individuals who don't identify with those identities kind of coming in and being like, Well, what do queer and trans Muslims need? Right? What are y'all why? Exactly because we, we are the community, right? We're living this every day. And so within within MASGD a lot of my role over the last year has been for sustaining programming kind of expanded, elevate the different things that that previous folks had had built. So many incredible folks have been a part of MASGD over the years. And so they had built such a beautiful foundation, it was really just a matter of expanding programming and the reach and just really making sure that we're supporting queer and trans Muslims in the ways that they need to. And one thing that we've been building that we're we're just announcing now actually, is due to our recognition that next year, we were expecting next year to be the horrible year, right. As we move closer to the election, we were expecting the ramp up just islamaphobia to happen then, right the ramp up and anti semitism they ramp up in queer phobia and transphobia. And everything, we did not realize that 2023 was also going to be that year. And so we are looking at potentially expediting some programs that we were hoping to launch mid next year. But two of the major things that we're launching is both case management and then specifically a queer and trans Muslim helpline where queer trans Muslims would be able to receive support immediately, instead of having to wait long wait times between programs, or potentially having to access different services within the behavioral health system that are not really equipped to support us in a lot of ways. And also don't know how to support us quickly. Especially considering that the vast majority of our community don't have access to generational wealth. They don't have access to even things like health insurance a lot of times and the amount of times just this year, that individuals will either I will reach out to them and just check in and be like hey, how Are things going or someone will just randomly check in and just let it slip have the amount of times that people have been harassed and assaulted just over the last few months, even before all of this has happened, we've seen an enormous uptake over the last three weeks. But for even for things like that, being able to just access a phone number, right and have access to somebody, and it's going to be a peer run offline. So it's not a space where you're going to come and like access therapy and things like that. But most people just need another person who gets it. And that's what we're hoping that we'll be able to do with that. So initially, our plan was to launch that in May, I'm currently working on getting funding so that it launches earlier, potentially, especially with everything going on, like we needed this three weeks ago. So the sooner we're able to do that, the better. But we're also really intentional, if we're an organization that has a no volunteer policy, our community does not have access to wealth. And so recognizing that we don't feel like it's equitable, to ask people to volunteer on this, while they themselves are really struggling. And so we want to fully staff it, which is where, again, we're doing some fundraising efforts, trying to get more grants and things like that, to really be able to build this out properly, but really hoping that we can launch that soon. But outside of that a lot of our spaces are really just bringing folks together having spaces of belonging. We'll also do intensive skill building series. So we've done like, transformative justice skill building. And we just went back to our retreats again. So we had a smaller retreat this year of about 15 people. And that was really beautiful for I think, for a lot of people to just experience the joy of like what's possible when you're in physical proximity to one another, versus just behind a screen. And we're trying to be really careful of how we build that out incident and COVID is still very much real, but also at the same time, how do we make it as accessible as possible for individuals? So this past year, we actually did it entirely free for our participants, instead of asking people to potentially apply for scholarships and do additional layers. That to us are just very antipoverty because they just add more labor. For folks who need who need the money most.
Speaker 1 27:15
Yeah, absolutely. We're gonna circle back to MASGD and how everyone can can support because I think it's super important. And so, you know, this is, this is something that I personally spend a lot of time thinking about is the intersections of weaponization. Because I grew up with, you know, in a Muslim household with parents who are like, Islam is love. And, you know, very, like non intersectionally. weaponized, right, it was just Islam as love, which means queer, straight, trans, like, it doesn't matter like it, you know, it is not our place to judge you are to love everyone support everyone, like so on and so forth. And naturally, unfortunately, the way that white supremacy and different layers of of oppression and dominance operate, right, the additional layers of marginalized identity that can be weaponized against you. The way that our society works, unfortunately, they will. And so I say all of that, because I have community members that know that I was raised like that, right. And so I feel honored to be a safe space. But in that safety, what I'm hearing from them, is that right now, in this moment, not just my, you know, Arab and Muslim like siblings, but specifically Palestinian, queer and trans folk right now are sharing with me, the the bothness of we're completely being erased in the conversation right now. But somehow, simultaneously, also be our wea, our identities being weaponized for justifications, right? So it's like, we don't matter. This is what this is what literally what I'm told, we don't matter, unless we can be a weapon for you. And so I would love for you to elaborate on that and speak to that, because I think we need to be having more conversations around that publicly.
Speaker 2 29:20
Yeah, absolutely. And I will say, I definitely want to encourage people to really look into some of the history of things like pinkwashing, even the history of queerness and Palestine, there are some really great resources out there. I kind of want to start with the reality of that pre 1948 queerness was alive and while in Palestine, st with transness and so my grandparents on my dad's side in particular, are probably the first to to really know that I was queer and trans. Right and for us to be having conversations of like, yeah, they're like, Yeah, we had that queer neighbor, right like, and it was just so normal, right? So to them For me to be like, oh, yeah, like, let's sit down. Let me tell you about this because this is a big deal. They would just be like, What are you talking about? Like, what? But like, I Okay, I guess I also had food for breakfast like, are we just sharing? Yeah, like they, they legitimately would not get it. And it's interesting of thinking of that as like the my grandparents generation that grew up pre 1948, right that were born at pre 1948. And free, honestly, really, even though the British had colonized Palestine, there was so much resistance to it, that they actually did not adopt a lot of the culture that was coming in, that was going to be homophobic and transphobic, in the same way that places that had been colonized for hundreds, hundreds of years would have. And so that generation was the most accepting of people, right? They understood things in a way that even today people struggle with, right? We talked about how the younger generation gets it. And I'm like, but have you met people before? Like, pre colonization, like, I love people in their 90s. Like, let's go there. Because it's like, I feel like nowadays, a lot of the younger generation, they get things, but they got things through understanding things, whereas back then it was I just get you, you're just a human, everything that you are as valid, I don't need to know all these identities, I don't need to understand anything, because we're in community, we're here, we're going to be here, there's nothing that you can do, that will make me ever not want to be around you. And that's my parents, the way my parents are now of like, there's nothing that any of us as our kids could do that. Whether they understand it or not, they're like you're our kids, like, we will love you forever, we will always want you in our lives period there. There are no ands, buts or anything else. There are no stipulations. There just is. But I will say I've when I was younger and kind of thinking about this, I did see a huge difference between my parents generation, my grandparents generation. So my parents generation are the ones that were born into war. They were born into war, first in Palestine, and then war grew up into adulthood, right in another war with the Gulf War, right and and then were displaced across the globe. And in a lot of ways for them, they started viewing a lot of these differences, like, quote, unquote, differences as white, right? Or that these are a result of whiteness versus actually this is just human. But because white supremacy has sent the message of that white supremacy is all of these things, and only white supremacy is those things actively harming us in the process. And so I have noticed that my parents generation, they're the ones that are less likely to just inherently understand these things. From my experience, they usually do eventually, it just, it's just not the same, right? Because, again, they were taught that this is a white thing. And so there's almost this confusion of like, wait, but you're not white. Like what what happened, like, Did we do something wrong? Like is it is it because of whiteness, and people hear that as like them being really homophobic and transphobic, which is very fair. And also at the same time, it's really that anti white supremacy that they're that they're bringing forward, but where they don't really have a comprehensive idea of white supremacy, right, where it becomes much more intersectional. And so I always like to start there of that Palestine has always been queer and trans friendly, right. And it's actually everything that's happened in the last 75 years, that's actually moved away from that. And then in terms of the weaponization, even so even the US and European countries and Canada and places like that, as a trans person, it is actually almost impossible to immigrate to any of those countries, because transness is still seen as a disability. And if you are disabled, you are barred from immigration to all those places. The only exception is if you fit within a specific narrative that they want, where they could be the saviors, then you could be an SI Li, or potentially Arab refugee at times, and say, white people, please save me. And then they're like, Okay, maybe cute. But outside of that, if you do not fit that narrative, you're actually just continuously actively punished. Right? And I think about that, like within even my family and as a writer and things like that, as like if I wanted to publish a book to talk about how, how Islam is transphobic or something like that and how horrible my family is and how I had to fight for my life and I was displaced because of my queerness and transness. I'd be getting book deals left and right.
Speaker 1 34:48
Oh my god, you'd be so wealthy.
Speaker 2 34:51
Oh my god, I would have so many Netflix documentaries. I would just have everything right the greats, but to come at it from like, actually, yeah, my parents are cute. Yeah, we're good. Yeah, my grandparents were also good. I've never had to come out because it was just cute. It was fine ever, like, just started talking about it. And people were like, okay, cute, we're good. Like that it, this whole idea, this narrative, right has, has really been like it's been imported to the rest of the world. Right. And it has really like set in unfortunately, even within a lot of for a lot of queer and trans people who don't live in global North countries were in their heads right now. White people will save them, because that's where things are good. And so as this is happening, and people send me all kinds of messages being like, Oh, my God, hamas will kill you, right? Or your people are gonna kill you, and, and all of that kind of stuff. And it's like, okay, cute, like, do you actually care? One, you really don't. But two, I've never received a death threat from any Muslims from any of my people. I've only ever received death threats for my queerness and transness. From white people, only exclusively, white people. Right. And but, but that's really that weaponization, and I will say is that as Israel has also used those same tools, right to create that same narrative where if you're in Gaza, right, and you say, as a trans person, you're terrified of Gaza, they will take you they will, they will parade you, they will do an entire media campaign to show how they saved you quote, unquote, when the only people you needed saving from were them, because they are the ones that put you in those conditions. And I will say, of queer trans Palestinians, in Palestine, whether in Gaza, or most predominantly in the West Bank, have been putting out resources around pinkwashing. For yours, they have shared everything that needs to be shared, there's nothing that I can add to that conversation. And my question to everyone is, where have you been all of those years, because this isn't the first time that you've heard of it. We have been telling people who are like, I'm gonna go to Tel Aviv pride. And we have been sharing it, it gets shared every single pride season, it gets shared throughout the year, and again, and again and again. And yet now as an ongoing genocide is happening. You want to to weaponize our identities, right to justify that this is why the 8000 people who have been murdered had to die. So like, I would rather be in the closet and bring back the 30 family members I've lost in the last three weeks. Like the closet is fine. I don't mind like, I don't know what the closet is like, however, I don't care. Right? But like, we want our independence, right? Like, we want to be home, we will figure out our shit. That's ours. None of your business.
Speaker 1 37:55
And that's, that's what I was gonna say is this, the this? I don't even know what to call it right? It's this very gaslighty, weaponization and narrative, because you don't care, like let us be clear you, you do not care. Obviously, we're watching that happen. And also, it's not your problem. Right? If you were to give Palestinians back their homeland, and liberate them and give them their freedom and their safety, it's still not your problem. Right, like, let communities manage themselves, because prior to whiteness, and settler colonialism, indigenous communities have been have a number of practices and a number of of systems in place to manage ourselves globally. Then y'all came in, and for lack of a better term fucked up, right, like, Y'all destroyed our indigenous practices and our and our communal ways of being globally. Right. And so specifically for Palestinians, it like I just, I just really want to make the point for people that it's not your business, if you're not Palestinian, you don't get a say, and how Palestine or Palestinians, quote unquote, police themselves, like your concern should simply be what am I doing to ensure that they are free enough and have the sovereignty to be able to police themselves? That's exactly
Speaker 2 39:35
and I do want to just add one more layer to all of this, I find rarely gets mentioned and most people don't know this. So I received my master's in conflict transformation and social justice a couple years ago, I guess it's it's why I was living in Northern Ireland. And one of the areas of research that I was doing was around like women peace and security and a lot of the work there. And one thing that a lot of people don't realize is so and this, this goes kind of a little bit back, right? So this goes pre Trump. So this goes into the Obama era. So during Obama's presidency, two different women peace and security resolutions were passed in the United States. During the second one, it was the first time in the US that they kind of shifted the narrative a little bit. So prior to that, with like the Bush administration and things like that, if folks remember, women's safety was used as a justification for invading Afghanistan and Iraq. Right. And that had been happening for a while. And what happened with that second women Peace and Security Resolution with the Obama administration, is that they changed it to be that women can also be perpetrators, and not just victims. And in particular, and this was actually really disgusting. And I really wish more people were talking about this. In particular, it was shared within the countering violent extremism section of that, which for people who don't know countering violent extremism, that is specifically a predominantly youth, Muslims of color, predominantly black Muslims surveillance program that was started in England and then adopted in the US. And so specifically framing it as Muslim women can also be perpetrators. And then in addition to that, they didn't just leave it at that, they introduced that now, the people that need saving are the LGBTQ community members, specifically in the Global South. And if you listen to Trump's election speech, one of the very first ones, the one that he did in Arizona, where he called people a lot of different things where it was just, it was incredibly violent, Trump actually used the exact same words, to specifically say that we need to go and invade these countries. I don't remember if that was the one where he called all of us shithole countries, or if it was another one. But he specifically made the case to invade us to save the LGBTQ community. This is Trump we are talking about, but it was the exact same language, right. And so seeing how it's weaponized now, it just kind of part of that same legacy, were realized only actually, we can't use women as justification to continue invading all of these countries, people are starting to wake up to that, let's do all of this other stuff. And for me, I don't think it's any kind of coincidence or accident, that there's a rise in anti trans bills. I think there were over 500 introduced this past year in the United States. Because they all go hand in hand, right. And so you could be both transphobic here, and also say that you're trying to save trans people by invading a country. And that's generally what's happening. So it's layer upon layer upon layer of gaslighting. And I really wish more people knew some of like those pieces of it, because then you go into like the UN resolutions and how they've upheld so many of those things. But I'll stop there, because I can go on and on about that topic. No,
Speaker 1 43:17
I think that's really, really important because people don't understand really, even with the beginning, right with Bush in the Patriot Act like people don't understand how, like they hear generally about these policies, and generally what they're quote unquote, supposed to be for and supposed to mean. But unless you're sitting down and really reading the policy and the language of it, and they're very intentionally written with like, enough precision, but also enough vagueness. So like we can really use them to do whatever we kind of need to at any given time, right. And, you know, I have a family member who works and policy and jokes all the time, he was like, they literally write this stuff so that the average person who hasn't studied like policy writing XYZ is so confused that they just kind of hands off, and they're like, Okay, whatever, like not my monkey, not my circus, right. And we're seeing all of the impacts of that reality right now in Palestine. And so I think it's an important note, and for everybody listening again, I always tell you all wall misinformation, and disinformation is rampant, Google is still free. And so if you learn the discernment, if you use the discernment lenses that I at least have been teaching you to use over the last few years, and make sure that you are vetting your resources, you can find all of this information and you can and there are tons of people who have taken the time to translate it into write digestible, kind of everyday speak, so that you can better understand it. And so that even now, when you are continuing to call for a ceasefire and call your representatives, you can start to understand the language to use and and understand how language is being weaponized. You know, and all of those things so super important. Yes, there's probably a whole episode on that alone that we could come back and do. But with the time we have left, I want to take another pivot if that feels okay, because this is something that's really important to me generally, but also specifically within the what I'm calling the liberation movement for Palestine, right? Because this is not a new movement, it is 75 years old. So I recently posted about the history of the usage of the watermelon and an art as resistance, you know, within the Palestinian Liberation Movement, and I know you have a book of poems coming out on the 13th of November, called Blood Orange, and I'll let you speak to a little bit to that a little bit more. But if you could just expand on that right artists resistance artist resistance specifically for for Palestinians, and the importance of art within the community, and then also a little bit about, you know, your book, and, and where the, the inspiration for the poems came from? And all of that.
Speaker 2 46:03
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I feel like Art has always been a huge part of the Palestinian Liberation Movement, even prior to the last 75 years with the, the Arab revolution, right, as we were trying to get rid of the British in the 20s, and so on, so forth. And it's, it's been a huge part of every single struggle around the world. And the cool thing with art is, depending on the medium that you're using, is that it's so easily transferable between causes. And so you could create, like visual media for Palestine, but actually, it's so relevant to potentially what's happening in Sudan, right, or potentially what's happening in Armenia, or what's about to happen in Haiti, or has been happening in Haiti or in the Congo. It's so easily transferable. And it's almost as if someone, one of your own people from there created it, even though they could be potentially 1000s of miles away. And I've always viewed our as like that across different mediums. So most of most of my art comes out in writing. So I've been a novelist since I was 13. In prior in a different nonprofit that I had founded, and, and run for a few years, called life and my days, I actually built a an online social change platform where folks from around the world would just share their different experiences. And I would support them to share in a way that promotes healing and growth. And the most beautiful pieces of that were like there was this one time, the last one that I remember is this person in his 80s in Malaysia reached out and was like, Oh, I just read the read this last article that was written, and I connected so much to it. And at the time, it was written by a 16 year old living in Jordan. Right? And, and neither of them knew that right? Like it within that bio, it wasn't listed, like this person is 16. Right? This person was was fully anonymous and stuff. And just so for me, art is so powerful in those ways where we could be talking about all of those things. But sometimes it's reading something or looking at something, or Be, or having something described to you or listening to music from an area that that's actually what's going to open your heart and make this make sense. All of a sudden, like, oh, wait, this makes sense. So I definitely want to encourage people to really explore art and all kinds of art of like, if you love music, check out Palestinian music, don't appropriate it. I know some people like really like to do that. Don't appropriate or however, just be within it right and know how much of it was last year along the way. But also of like reading things from 75 years ago, or even longer than that in the Arab revolution period. It's applicable today. Like you almost cannot tell that it was written 80 years ago, 90 years ago, it feels as if I just wrote it two weeks ago. And something that I wrote two weeks ago, feels as if it could have been 70 years ago. Like that's how long the struggle has been. And so are in a way allows us to connect across generations with a long experiences instead of focusing on like, Okay, well, your experience is this, my experience is that and so we must be so different. And in reality, it's like, no displacement is displacement. And I've been really thinking about this. So if I have a poem in the new collection called, I believe it's called southeast or southwest. It's one of those but it basically reflects on how some of the family went southeast and somewhat southwest. And how that shifted everything like my family was the one that went southwest to Kuwait, or their family went south. Southwest took us, south east to Kuwait. And how just that movement just a single moment in time, changed our families for generations. And so to me, that's really the beauty of art. So with with blood orange The title pays homage to the Yaffa oranges, which is so my family's from Yaffa. I'm named Yaffa. And so really wanted to bring more of just me into that. And the watermelon is such a beautiful symbol of resistance for Yaffa. In particular oranges for us would be a big deal, because the oranges were appropriated first by the British, right, they were stolen from us done, and then re appropriated again by the settler colony of Israel. And yet we still remember it, right? Even though most people don't know that connection anymore, like I've lived in the UK, like they'll call them Jaffa oranges. And they will connect that they're talking about Yaffa, they're talking about Palestine. And so I really wanted to have a name that symbolizes that while still honoring the genocide that's currently happening. And writing this book was really interesting, because it's always been the hardest for me to write about Philistine is whether poetry or writing novels, whatever it is, it's always been hardest to write about home. And yet, as this was unfolding over the last few weeks, it was so easy to write this book, this collections about 32 poems, and I wrote them within a weekend. And they were just perfect as they came out, they, they just, they were ready for the world. And at the time, the reason I decided to publish this is because I really wanted to do something to one reason awareness around those intersects of being queer, trans and Palestinian.
Speaker 2 51:34
And even beyond that, just talk to the experience of being Palestinian and being displaced of the multitude of different things that we experience. And also, I wanted to find a way to really raise some funds for queer and trans Palestinian work that's happening, and queer and trans Palestinians on the ground, where right now we're seeing a lot of money going directly on the ground to a lot of the medical services and the humanitarian aid, which is absolutely beautiful, I definitely want to encourage people to still donate. And also at the same time, to not forget that queer trans Palestinians exist everywhere, like queer and trans Palestinians are dying in Gaza they're dying in the West Bank, they're being displaced again, and again and again. And also, we're out here in the diaspora. And because of the intersect that we live with, we have so many systemic barriers in the first place. Right? So and this just adds more to it with Islamophobia. And so queer and trans Palestinian artists are losing art shows because of the rise in Islamophobia. They're potentially losing their their community spaces, their art gallery spaces, even the community space that, that I've done some sessions at, which is Co-owned by queer Palestinian, they don't have rent in December. And so I really wanted to raise some funds to be able to, to have some access to additional funds to be able to support some of these spaces, and then even just build out more of the check in spaces that we need as queer and trans Palestinians. For for just our own survival. As we go through this. I think a lot of people don't realize. And I would love to just, I just want to really name this directly, because I haven't really heard many people naming this directly of I would give up anything to be able to go die in Gaza today, right to be on the ground, like I would rather die there potentially, then live from such a distance, right and not be able to die with my people, right for the causes that I believe in for justice in every sense of the word. And so the way that we carry right as people outside of that, right, that survivor's guilt for so many people is so real, and so profound. And it's so critical right now versus like, a year from now to really have those conversations, to recognize how to reset our nervous system so that this doesn't become our new normal, right to be able to process all the grief that we're carrying, to be able to get to a place where we're actually honoring all the emotions going through us. Versus really like allowing survivor's guilt to move us away from that. And I'll share just one final thing as a story for that. A few years ago in the same organization that had the online social change platform life in my days. We were doing some mental health work in Jordan at the time. And every event that we did, someone asked about suicide and so we ended up hosting the first suicidality summit potentially in the region. I don't know if anyone else has done another one. But at the time, this was 2017 2017 2018. I think 2017. And even us as organizers did not realize that Jordan has the highest rate of death by suicide amongst any countries in the region. And people were shocked by this and to an extent so Are we sort of where to, and literally a few days later, I was meeting with another organizer from the West Bank, who was able to go back and forth between Jordan and the West Bank. And we were talking about it. And she was like, That makes total sense. She's like, for us, when someone dies, we all grieve together. She's like, whether we know the person, whether we don't, we're all gonna cry, we're all going to show up, we're going to feed each other, we're going to show up 100% of the time. And when something wonderful happens, like someone gets married, a child is born, whatever it is, someone graduates, whatever it is, she's like, we all celebrate whether we know each other or not, we are going to go all out, like we're going to do a week long wedding, just because, and she's like, but then I cross the border, border, and I come to Jordan. And she's like, here, they don't process anything. She's like, when you have something positive happening, you think to yourself, that you're not allowed to really embrace the celebration, because people are dying across the border. And she's like, when someone dies, you think it's not horrible enough, because we're being killed and murdered in other countries. And so she's like, You all don't honor. The emotions that happen when a child is like I have a problem with their parents usually will be like, well, your cousins are dying, right? And just shuts it up. And, and I really don't want to see that happen to people wherever they are in the world, right. But that's where we're going to go. We know, that's the path that we go on. And so I really wanted to raise some funds to be able to address some of that specifically for the queer and trans Palestinian community, so that we're able to have those conversations for people to just know that actually, like, go and if you're about to get married, go get married, like, have the biggest wedding. Right? Like if Palestine is going to be free tomorrow, I would maybe tell you wait until the day after. But we don't know that right. So celebrate everything, mourn everything. And also recognizing have, most of us don't have any of those spaces to do that with community. And so I'm really hoping that we're able to raise some funds with this, to be able to really do that.
Speaker 1 57:14
And so again, so the fun, the proceeds from blood orange, are going to go towards that. And I mean, I'm just having my own moment listening, because I think that we forget about how impactful art really can be to connect us. I think a lot of times, to your point, we, especially if we all come from a people that has experienced a similar struggle, and we've have distance from it, or maybe we've gotten our liberation, then we're like, oh, I you know, I'm okay now, right? But I really encourage everybody, especially people that if you have any ancestrally, right, you have this similar struggle, being able to connect, like you said to you know, whether it's your poems, whether it's the music, whether it's the you know, I just love the story of the watermelon, because it was like Oh, word, even a watermelon bet Watch right? Or the blood orange is it it reminds you how human you are. And and it allows you to connect to the humanity of a people that maybe you are, you know, you don't belong to those people, but you share a struggle. And I think that that is such an important piece that's missing when we're talking about liberation is that I actually you know, I'm to your point of like celebrating big mourning big all the things I'm I'm very lucky to know a lot of Palestinians. But I don't need to know a single one, none of us should have should shouldn't, it shouldn't be a requirement for connecting to this to this struggle and fighting for this. Right the liberation of Palestinians, or like you said, or the Sudanese, or the Afghan population and in Pakistan right now, or in the Congo or in Yemen or any of the things that are happening, right, connecting to your humanity. And then through art, allowing you to connect to another person's humanity is such a beautiful process. And I really, really want to encourage everybody if you do nothing else, right after listening to like, immediately after listening to this episode, go find a piece of art, write a piece of music and just allow yourself to connect. Because even in the music, you don't have to understand the language. Right? You can hear the emotion you can feel it and let yourself connect in that in that way. That being said, I want to circle back just before we wrap up. How can we support MASGD
Speaker 2 59:42
in terms of supporting MASGD? The the best ways to support MASGD is really to just follow us to begin with. So you can go on our website and sign up for the newsletter. So it's just the MASGD.org or follow us on Instagram, where we share about all other events that were happening, if you have access to financial means, if you're able to make a donation, your donation goes a long way to be able to create a lot of these programs and make sure that we're, we're showing up in the ways that we would love to for our community. And you could find all of those links online or on Instagram, you could if you are a queer and trans Muslim, and again, Muslim defined in whatever context makes the most sense for you. Definitely feel free to also join us for programs. Also, if you wanted to do any offerings, we have kind of like an open door policy for greeting trans Muslims, where folks are able to do any kind of programs that they want, and we will get them paid. And so definitely, highly encourage grant trans Muslims to check us out. And reach out if y'all need anything. If if y'all want to start things within your own communities, we're always happy to support. So those would be some of the ways to really interact with us.
Speaker 1 1:01:00
And all of the links will be provided as well, you also don't feel like you had to scramble to write anything down, we will get you all of the links. Yeah. Thank you so much for being here with me today. Is there? Is there anything else on your heart, your spirit that you that we didn't cover? Or that you you want to leave us with? As a final note? Yeah,
Speaker 2 1:01:19
I think the the final thing and this kind of goes back to those definitions that we were talking about early on with settler colonialism and things like that, definitely do some work to really reflect on what those words mean, what those concepts are, and how they've shown up in the world. And then the other one that I want to invite folks to really interrogate is their concept of humanity. Because I tell people these days that if you need me to do something, to prove my humanity to you, for me to be humanized, then our definitions are not in line. Because to me, humanity just is, we're human period, there's nothing that you can do that moves you away from it, and there's nothing that you can do to move you towards it. And I would love that to become part of the discourse instead of people asking me to do things, to humanize myself. And I'm like, if you needed me to humanize myself in the first place, we're not there, we're not on the same page, I don't want that definition of humanity that you're keeping in your like back pocket, because my definition includes everyone. And I want to invite people to really reflect on that, and really see how their definitions can become so much more expansive, in my opinion, as they should.
Speaker 1 1:02:32
So I know I said, we're gonna wrap but that's a great point. And so now I have follow ups, because this is something I think about all the time, right, as I said, like I was raised, with a very clear understanding that humans are humans. And maybe you have to create distance from some humans based on the choices that they make, and how they choose to treat other people. But at the at the baseline, everyone deserves that same level of respect of right of honoring their personhood, like all of those things. And so something that I know I struggle with is having that as a personal definition, and still realizing that so much of the world doesn't right to your point. And I think about this, because a lot of like, these interviews that I'm doing is an attempt to try to get those people that don't have that definition, to connect the dots to see, we're not different. Actually, you are just a human being and all of the nonsense that I have been taught and been programmed to believe. Is the thing standing between us not anything about you and not anything about me. So with all of that being said, I'm wondering if if you could, whether it's you know, leave some words for that person that needs that, right, that needs an interview of a person telling their personal story to be like, oh, yeah, that's a person, right, that needs those things in order to see others as human. Is there something that you would say to that person?
Speaker 2 1:04:04
I love this question. There's so much I would say, and in particular, I would ask that person to reflect on their own humanity. Because if you need someone to justify their existence to you, it means you have you're not at peace with your own. Right? Because we define if you define humanity in a certain way of like, here's stipulations of this is what makes you human. That means you've created an entire world for yourself that you can never belong in. And so I think it just starts with people directly themselves, right? This isn't about anybody else. It's that the the deep work that needs to happen just exists within you. And I always tell people have always go back to basics. Go back to the deepest of levels of, I think at times we, I tell people like we complicate all the simple things and we simplify all the complex He did things, right like we're, we're messing up on both sides. And, to me so much of this is not none of it is complicated. We don't need to know things. I don't need to know anything about you to fully honor your humanity. And there is a beautiful video that Maya Angelou has. And I can send it to you later as well, where she talks about a quote from the philosopher Terence, way back from, I believe the the Greek Empire, the Greek Empire. And Terence talks about of that there's nothing within humans that is foreign to any of us. So within every single one of us, we have all the building blocks for anything that any human has ever done. And I know that's a scary thought for people to think. Right. So for me to think that I have the exact same building blocks that like Netanyahu has, right? Yeah. But she shares how profound that is, if that actually, we do have every single thing. And so all of a sudden, anything that other people do, becomes part of humanity. And the flip side of it, all of the things that you're looking at other people doing, and you're like, wow, people are so amazing, thinking of like, the Martin Luther King's of the world, right. And all these other people that you might be looking up to, you have those same building blocks, too. And that is such a beautiful, profound definition instead of inherent good and evil and all of that, that is honestly just taking away from that. We're all just human.
Speaker 1 1:06:40
Yeah. I love that. That's beautiful. I really love that idea of you've created a world for yourself in which you don't belong. which inevitably, if if you don't belong, how can anyone else? Right, so I love that as a as a directive to inquiry for self. Right. Cool. Great. Thank you. Again, yeah, it has been a pleasure. Listeners, we'll get you all the links to the socials for Yaffa and MASGD and preorder for the book. And, you know, again, I suggest maybe going back and listening to this one, one more time, maybe slowing it down a little, because there are just so so many gems in so many important moments. And for yourself as you're going back and listening. I really urge you all to any of those questions that come up inside of you or anything that feels like it maybe is agitating a little bit or feels a little internally confrontational. Write that down and get curious about that as well. Because that is information for you to begin that internal dialogue and that internal conversation, right in terms of moving our needle towards equity moving our internal selves towards collective liberation. Yaffa again, thank you.
Speaker 2 1:08:04
Thank you so much for having me. That was incredibly regenerative. So I appreciate IT
Speaker 1 1:08:08
You're very welcome. All right, y'all until the next time.