Author: Alya Mooro

Egyptian-Palestinian writer and performer Randa Jarrar is described as “one of the finest writers of her generation,” and the “femme daddy of your dreams.” The author of the critically acclaimed “A Map of Home” and the recently released memoir “Love is an Ex-Country”, she is also a filmmaker and actor who has appeared on the Emmy-Award winning show “Ramy”, and “#1 Happy Family USA”.  

Here, Jarrar talks to author and writer Alya Mooro about her journey to self-love, joy as revolution – in particular as a femme – what it means to be African, and much more…

What was your relationship with your heritage like, growing up?

My heritage and my connection to where I'm from has always been a combination of my Palestinian-ness and my Egyptian-ness, but my Egyptian-ness has really been the place where I felt most at home, for the obvious reason, which is it's very difficult to visit Palestine [and] to live in Palestine. Egypt is where my parents met because Nasser [the president at the time] allowed Palestinians to attend college in Egypt for free. My dad went out there when he was 17 and met my mom. I begin in that space, in Egypt, so it will always be a huge part of who I am and my sensibilities and my nostalgia, and where I yearn to be. It's something that I grew more and more fond of as I became an adult; studying Egyptian literature, reading the amazing books that we've produced. My connection to Egypt has been both through words and literature, and through my own background.

How do you think that your identity and heritage has informed your work and the stories you're drawn to?

[After we moved to the US] my mum insisted that we be in Egypt at least three months out of the year. During that time – because [she’s] a musician – she would make us go to a lot of musical theatre. Seeing the way that writing, music and performance came together on a stage was a huge part of why I wanted to be an artist. I didn't have the musical abilities that other people in my family did, [so] I was more drawn to writing and to the musicality of language and how Egyptian dialect lends itself to that – it actually invents that. Egyptian dialect is so genius and has so many amazing layers to it, and it's constantly being reinvented and refined. That became what I was obsessed with; the beauty of the language in my heritage, in my ancestry, and the ways that it's changed and grown over time.  

About your critically acclaimed first book “A Map of Home”, released in 2008, you wrote: "911 happens, I decide no one will read a novel about an Arab-American Muslim girl. I decide, yes they f*****g will, I keep writing.” Where did that perseverance and determination come from?

I had spent 1998 - 2000 studying Egyptian literature and focusing on people whose work had been censored or had landed them into prison [so] I felt like I was still pretty privileged to be able to write – and freely. I didn't know what the future would hold, people were saying, "They're gonna round us up and it's not going to be fun." And I was like, well, even if they do that, I come from people who survived that and still created art. Like... I'm strong, and I come from strength. Remembering that and honouring that was a huge part. If I didn't have that literary ancestry behind me, holding me and kind of pushing me forward, I don't think I would have had that strength.

Your books have centered Palestinians, Egyptians and Muslims throughout. What do you think that representation, or the lack of, does for people – and did for you, in particular?

Because I didn't move to the US until I was almost 14, I had a very strong sense of identity. If I had grown up here – or grown up anywhere outside Egypt, or Palestine, or what people call the Middle East – it would have been very painful. Growing up seeing myself and seeing different versions of Arab-ness and Arab feminists was very affirming and strengthening for me as a person and as an artist. So, moving to the US and having a complete lack of that was very strange; it felt like a famine; a famine of images, a famine of oneness. The lack of your own reflection makes you feel kind of wild and dehumanizes you, and robs you of the ability to feel seen and heal. It makes one more imaginative, I think, because you have to figure out a way to create that connection in order to survive and to thrive, but it also is very alienating and lonely making.

Tell us about your new book “Love is an Ex-Country” and what you learned about yourself through the process of writing it and putting it out into the world.

I really wanted to write about the experiences of my particular body in the world. Initially, I was worried because it's not a traditional, linear narrative, it's very fragmented – as I am – and as many of us are who have had to deal with [the] diaspora and being uprooted from what we knew to a place where people othered our bodies, or made us feel less than because we were different from the white, supremacist ideal of what a body should look like.

I believe that we all need to work to liberate our bodies and liberate ideas of what a body should be like. When you go back home, people will greet you with, "You've gained weight,” or “You’ve lost weight", or whatever the most obvious thing is. To me, that's all very connected with colonialism, and for us to decolonize and to free ourselves – not just us as North Africans or as SWANA people, but everyone. It's to be like, "Oh, no, these are all just modes of incarceration;" ways for us to be robots, or just be workers, and constantly feel like we need just one or two or seven things to reach a goal – which is not even a real thing – because there is no such thing as perfection. The people who suffer the most are those of us who don't fit those molds, but still love ourselves.

The theme of the month on AMAKA is liberation and pride. Tell us a little about what those words mean to you?

Queerness is really where it's at for me. Liberation and pride in my queerness and my queer community and the way that the world is threatened by queers and queerness. Pride is connected to [the] queer community and the ways that we fight and party and love each other – no matter what. Despite the ways that we are criminalized, or policed, or whatever it is. Liberation goes hand in hand with that because it's in that extra-ness that we are able to break free the most.

You've spoken often about how experiencing joy is revolutionary. Tell us a bit about what you mean by this and how much more important it is for people who exist in bodies or lives that have traditionally been marginalized.

Experiencing joy – especially queer joy and femme joy – is really looked down upon in larger society. For me to feel that joy – and to express myself the way I feel on the inside too, outwardly through my gender and through my gender presentation – is very powerful. People tend to get mad when other people are happy, [it’s] very threatening to others [and] I feel like anytime that something is threatening, we have to look into why and participate in it even more because there is something there that is connected to the key to our liberation.

Also, [it’s] connected to all those Masri [Egyptian] plays that I would go to and how much joy they brought people, and how much suffering there really is in the world and the ways that art, music, [and] beauty brings joy to us and helps us find a reason to continue living. Just remembering that we have the capacity for joy, even though we are constantly being asked to work and to grieve, that's a huge part of why experiencing and expressing joy is such a big part of my process.

Tell us a bit about your journey with self-love.

I think it's connected to everything I mentioned about not growing up [in the US] and having people around me who either looked like me or spoke like me. Feeling that sense of oneness or unity with the universe is a big part of where it comes from [too, and] growing your confidence. That comes from the inside; that's a constant brewing project and process; turning anger outward rather than inward and having love shine in and out. It's not something that happens once, it's something that happens every day and every day there's some sort of challenge to it that says, "No, you shouldn't feel this way about yourself." Our work is to think about where that voice is coming from [and] why, and really just think about everyone who came before me for me to live the life that I'm living, and how much bulls*** they had to deal with. I don't want to go backwards, I just want to keep going forward. Everything we do and heal is for everyone who came before us and for our future lineage, so it's something we have to keep working on.

Do you identify as African and what does it mean to be North African, to you?

I always have, since I was a kid. That can be tough because African-ness can so often be measured by melanin [and] as someone who is very melanin deficient, I have felt excluded from participating in African-ness - but that's on me, right? It doesn't change the fact that I'm African and that Africans can look different ways, and also [that] being African is political. There are so many Egyptians who don't think they're African, who don't see their Black heritage. I think it’s threatening for someone who looks like me to say there is Blackness in my family and my blood and that, no matter what I look like, where I was literally created was in Africa, in Alexandria, in a place where people would land to come to Africa, or to exit.

To me, it means being part of something so much bigger than myself or my family. It's a source of strength [and] pride. The amount that I've learned from particularly African women writers, has [been] life-changing; like reading Tsitsi Dangarembga [and] Ama Ata Aidoo; reading these incredible goddesses and the ways that they transmuted pain into liberation through art, through language, is a huge part of a lineage that I feel very drawn to and connected to that no one can take away from me – whether or not I get sunburned easily.

Is there a womxn from North Africa that you find inspiring right now?

All the women in Bnat el Houariyat. They're a group of North African women musicians that tour with Esraa Warda – they're super inspiring. These women who leave their communities for their music and create new families and communities with each other and tour the world to make this music – this music that is so liberating. If you go to any of their shows, it's so empowering. It literally heals your body to hear their music and to dance with them. They're my heroes right now.

Follow Randa Jarrar on Instagram here.

This interview has been lightly condensed and edited for clarity.

This is the fifth installment of the monthly Hakooli series, in which author and writer Alya Mooro speaks with groundbreaking North African womxn from across the disciplines and the diaspora, in an effort to spotlight and uncover all the brilliance the continent contains. 

Check out Alya’s picks of 3 more queer North African womxn in this month’s AMAKA newsletter.