The Queer Arab‪s‬ Alia, Ellie, Ahmed, Nadia and Adam

  Massoud Hayoun is a Los Angeles-based journalist and writer. His book When We Were Arabs recounts his grandparents’ lives in Egypt, Tunisia, Palestine, and Los Angeles as a decolonial reclamation of Jewish Arab identity. In part two of our two-part conversation, Massoud explains his decision not to include his queer identity in the book–with the intention of focusing on his grandparents’ stories and the anticolonial message, but also with some concern about making himself a singular voice on Queer Arab issues. We also discuss the challenges of writing for a mixed or unknown audience, where accounts of homophobia in…

Massoud Hayoun is a Los Angeles-based journalist and writer. His book When We Were Arabs recounts his grandparents’ lives in Egypt, Tunisia, Palestine, and Los Angeles as a decolonial reclamation of Jewish Arab identity.  In part one of our two-part conversation, Massoud explains the process of conceptualizing and writing this book alongside his grandmother. We discuss the challenges of balancing our cultural focus on the past with the need to imagine a better future, and how claiming an identity can be a political choice. We also talk about how concepts of gender play out in our personal and political lives,…

Mloukhiyyé is a Beirut-based artist working with pixel art, text, video games, drag and more! They discussed their past and future projects, including illustrations of performers in and around the Lebanese drag scene, video games that reflect social and environmental issues, an illustrated book about Lebanese queer slang, and a piece involving Tatreez and Lebanese herbs.  We also talked about their journey into queer identity, why they chose the mloukhiyye leaf as their namesake, pronouns in Arabic, misogyny and homophobia within gaming circles, why queer people like Animal Crossing, and more! Shoutout to some of the artists and organizations mentioned…

Tasneem is a producer, singer-songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, newly based in Toronto, with East African and South Asian roots. Their recent album “Just Before the World Ends” captures a sense of raw punk authenticity with a third-culture-kid spin. We talked about Tasneem’s experience growing up in Oklahoma in a Muslim immigrant family, the influences and inspirations that have shaped their music, a story about dates, Palestine, and Portugal, and more! www.jesuistasneem.com

Claudia (she/her) is a queer, mixed Lebanese-American, disabled sexual and domestic violence preventionist, advocate, survivor, and social justice organizer, based in Fredericksburg, VA. She joined us to talk about her work as Community Services Specialist at the Rappahannock Council Against Sexual Assault (RCASA) in Fredericksburg, VA.  RCASA’s services include a 24/7 hotline, counseling, hospital accompaniment, legal accompaniment, case management, prevention education. As part of her position, Claudia educates people in her community (as early as middle school) about healthy, unhealthy, and abusive relationships, consent, bystander intervention, and much more. Our conversation included the importance of intersectionality in work around sexual…

Image: “Lovers in the Times of Revolution”  Omar Sfeir is a Beirut-based photographer and filmmaker. His work documents human intimacy as a means of questioning social norms. His photographic journeys tell the stories of non-conformists in the context of their respective societies, inspired by the taboos of sexual expression in the MENA region, especially towards the LGBT community.  We discussed his recent photography projects, which represent the Lebanese Revolution, the Beirut explosion, and the COVID-19 crisis through visual symbolism, and his new documentary “Album,” which follows the relationships between three queer Lebanese individuals (including himself) with their mothers. We also…