{"id":465,"date":"2012-01-06T09:29:41","date_gmt":"2012-01-06T17:29:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/loveinshallah\/?p=465"},"modified":"2014-11-03T11:19:12","modified_gmt":"2014-11-03T18:19:12","slug":"spotlight-zahra-noorbakhsh-stand-up-comedian-and-love-inshallah-contributor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/loveinshallah\/2012\/01\/06\/spotlight-zahra-noorbakhsh-stand-up-comedian-and-love-inshallah-contributor\/","title":{"rendered":"Spotlight: Zahra Noorbakhsh, stand-up comedian and Love InshAllah contributor"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
\n

\"\"Zahra Noorbakhsh\u00a0is a writer, actor and stand-up comedian, whose one-woman shows\u00a0All Atheists Are Muslim<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Hijab and Hammerpants\u00a0<\/em>have appeared at the New York International Fringe Theater Festival, San Francisco Theater Festival, and Solo Performance Workshop Festival to widespread critical acclaim. Zahra says of her love for comedy: \u00a0\u201cAs an Iranian woman with a heritage rich in satire, I\u2019ve always loved the power of comedy to bring people together.\u00a0\u00a0We can sympathize all we want in drama, but in order to genuinely laugh at a joke, we have to \u2018get it.\u2019 I love comedy that is dark or unapologetic and is able to hold its audience accountable\u2014comedy that forces us to laugh at ourselves rather than others.\u201d<\/p>\n

An excerpt from Zahra\u2019s piece, \u201cThe Birds, the Bees, and My Hole\u201d:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cFinally. My first year of high school was over, and summer was here. My mother was dropping me off to go to the movies with Jen, Kim, Laura, and Ryan. Wait. Oh, crap, I had forgotten about Ryan! There he was, walking with my girlfriends to the ticket booth. I knew that if my mom saw him, she would never trust me again and would confine me to the house for the rest of the summer.<\/em><\/p>\n

My parents were so strict that I couldn\u2019t go anywhere without their practically doing a background check on everyone who would be there. Regardless of how chaste the event was, they had to be sure there wouldn\u2019t be any boys present to tempt me down the path of loose women. The thing is, I was a late bloomer and had absolutely no interest in dating\u2014what I knew of it, anyway, based on Molly Ringwald\u2019s characters in John Hughes films like<\/em>\u00a0Sixteen Candles\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>Pretty in Pink. Though I could barely admit that I \u201cliked\u201d guys, my days of blissful ignorance about the world of dating were about to be over.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

A longer excerpt of Zahra\u2019s story (which Huffington Post Books dubbed \u201cholesome fun!\u201d) is available here<\/a>. It created quite a splash when it was posted yesterday, generating almost 1,300 comments! \u00a0To read Zahra\u2019s entire piece, order <\/a>Love InshAllah<\/em>\u00a0today!<\/p>\n

Why were you drawn to this project?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Upon meeting Ayesha and Nura\u2014two outspoken and fearless women\u2014I knew right off the bat that this would be a rare opportunity to shift generalizations and paradigms about Muslim women, both in and out of the Muslim community.\u00a0\u00a0I needed and wanted to be a part of their journey to make that change.<\/p>\n

What was the most challenging part of sharing your story?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

The most challenging part of sharing my story was\u2026all of it.\u00a0\u00a0Everything about writing this piece kicked my ass.\u00a0\u00a0In fact, \u201cDear Ayesha and Nura, This piece is kicking my ass\u2026\u201d is how most of my emails to them began.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

It was a terrifying experience for me to write without an audience present: an audience who could receive my story and then give me the immediate feedback I was so used to getting as a performer. \u00a0I had no idea who my audience was.\u00a0\u00a0I couldn\u2019t look beyond the page and see their faces and know that at the other end, reading these words are either my parents or my peers, my friends or my high school bullies, teenagers or scholars, Iranians or non-Iranians, Muslims or non-Muslims.\u00a0\u00a0The privacy I had typing up my story in the middle of the night in my apartment, alone, left me feeling incredibly naked and vulnerable.<\/p>\n

\n

If there\u2019s one thing you hope that readers will take away from your story, what is it?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The diversity and complexity of Muslim women\u2019s experiences of sexuality, as women.\u00a0\u00a0I hope our readers on the whole see that Muslim women, like all women, have subjective and differing opinions on the body, love, and lust; that we are not of a single,\u00a0homogeneous\u00a0mind-set any more than we are of a single,\u00a0homogeneous\u00a0experience.\u00a0\u00a0I also hope my candor helps build a friendlier community for women of all ages and backgrounds to share their sexy or not-at-all-sexy, naked-feeling stories.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Zahra Noorbakhsh\u00a0is a writer, actor and stand-up comedian, whose one-woman shows\u00a0All Atheists Are Muslim\u00a0and\u00a0Hijab and Hammerpants\u00a0have appeared at the New York International Fringe Theater Festival, San Francisco Theater Festival, and Solo Performance Workshop Festival to widespread critical acclaim. Zahra says of her love for comedy: \u00a0\u201cAs an Iranian woman with a heritage rich in satire, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2101,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[123,286,339,824,1007,1262,1331,1575],"class_list":["post-465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-love-inshallah-writers","tag-american-muslims","tag-comedy","tag-dating","tag-love-stories","tag-muslim-women","tag-relationships","tag-sex","tag-women-writers"],"yoast_head":"\nSpotlight: Zahra Noorbakhsh, stand-up comedian and Love InshAllah contributor<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Zahra Noorbakhsh\u00a0is a writer, actor and stand-up comedian, whose one-woman shows\u00a0All Atheists Are Muslim\u00a0and\u00a0Hijab and Hammerpants\u00a0have appeared at the\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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