Northern Blend: Female comedian stands up for Islam | Culture and Art |Axisoflogic.com

Tissa Hami, Comedian

Tissa Hami knows something about being hijacked.

Her budding career fell victim to cratering public opinion toward people of Middle Eastern descent in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Hami is essentially American, having lived in the United States most of her life. But she was born in Iran to Iranian parents and lived there until she was 5. She grew up in predominantly white, suburban Boston and was on a scholarly path — her father holds a Ph.D. in computer science and her mother is a dentist — until all career options suddenly went sideways.

After earning a master's degree in international affairs at Columbia University, she spent a stint in Paris.

“I came back to the United States on Labor Day weekend 2001,” Hami says. “A week-and-a-half later 9/11 happened. Two Ivy League degrees, and I could not get a job.”

She remained unemployed for more than a year. Hami came to realize her career would likely not pan out as she'd dreamt.

“I thought maybe it's time to take a chance, a risk to do something I'd never do,” she says. “I was really motivated to find a way to speak up and speak out after 9/11.”

Hami had never given comedy any serious thought, but her friends often told her she should try stand-up. So her platform would be the stage.

“To me, that was outside the bounds of what a good little Iranian girl from a good little Iranian family would do,” she says. “They expected me to have a serious profession, and I expected it, too.”

But Hami saw and heard the ugly stereotypes of her people swelling across the land, and she wanted to poke a hole in them. Comedy can be a sharp tack.

Hami used humor to attack those stereotypes. She told stories about dealing with airport security and her experiences as a Muslim.

“Now that we've moved away from (Sept. 11, 2001) timing-wise, I talk about that stuff a little less,” she says. “But I would say that's where (the stand-up career) started — just trying to present a different image of the Muslim woman and say, ‘Hey, we're not all hijackers. We're not all terrorists. We're not all out to get everyone.' ”

Hami, who has been a stand-up comic for seven years and is one of five comedians featured in the documentary film, “Stand Up: Muslim American Comics Come of Age,” will perform Tuesday night at the University of Northern Colorado.

For the first four years, Hami did comedy as a part-time gig while holding down a job in the admissions department of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Now it's her full-time career, and she travels the circuit, mainly performing on college campuses for much of the year.

Hami, 37 and now a resident of San Francisco, still wears the traditional Middle Eastern headscarf, a hijab, on stage.

Have audience reactions to her show changed during the years?

“I started about a year after 9/11, and we were still at a point in this country where we talked about 9/11 every day,” Hami says. “We don't talk about it every day anymore. Back then, when I went onto stage wearing a hijab it always packed a punch. And not always in a good way. Audiences didn't always react well. But it packed a punch. I would say that's become less true as we've moved away from 9/11, but I think that's a good thing. I think it's a good thing that it's not shocking to people anymore.”

Hami said she's surprised to see the numbers of Middle-Easterners at her shows, especially in parts of the country where she wouldn't expect them. She was interested to learn that Greeley has a growing Muslim community, thanks to the JBS USA meatpacking plant.

Hami, one of only a few Muslim female comedians in the world, doesn't shy away from poking fun at her own culture.

Take some lyrics from her “Ramadan Song,” for example:

"Some people think that Muslims are heathens/

"But go on, admit it, you love Cat Stevens;

"Mike Tyson is Muslim, so's Ahmad Rashad/

"Put them together and you're ready for jihad;

"When you can't have a drink at the local beer hall/

"Just think it was a Muslim who discovered alcohol;

"So find something to vomit on, it's time to celebrate Ramadan/

"Hope I don't get sent to the Pentagon, on this lovely, lovely Ramadan."

Hami still gets confronted “pretty regularly” by Muslims after her shows. She recalls a group of irritated Saudi Arabian students who saw her perform in the Midwest.

“I think part of what they were angry about is they had not heard American-style stand-up comedy,” Hami says. “I don't think what I do is too much different than what black, Latino or Asian stand-up comedians do. I'm sure the first black stand-up comedians heard it all from their communities when they started.”

While some of the stereotypes have faded along with thoughts of the 2001 attacks, Hami is always aware of how quickly things can change and how perceptions toward her heritage are a fickle beast.

“I can go around and tell my jokes and so can the other comedians, but as soon as something like Fort Hood (Texas) happens, or as soon as the underwear bomber guy happens, it only takes one terrible act to undo the good acts that others have been doing for years,” she says.

“Because we're still an unknown community, all it takes is one bad thing for people to swing back to really bad and negative perceptions.”

So, Hami keeps at this unexpected career, this way to speak out, hoping to affect some change through humor. Her parents remain somewhat nonplused about their highly educated daughter's jokester path.

“I think my mom still harbors fantasies of dental school,” she says.

Below- On Sat, Jan 9 2010 Charlie Jane Anders hosted the monthly Writers With Drinks at The Make-out Room. This is an excerpt from Tissa's performance that night.

Greeley Tribune