5 March 2010
Jennifer Jajeh's critically
acclaimed one-woman show, I Heart Hamas and Other Things I am Afraid
to Tell You, pulls no punches. From a Ramallah Convention in San
Francisco in the 1980s, to casting lines in contemporary Los Angeles, to
the front lines of the Israeli occupation and back, Jajeh navigates the
complicated and often conflicted terrain of Palestinian identity.
Despite the complexity, her journey is anchored by her sole quest to
find her own sense of self amidst the noise. This quest supersedes the
politics, the expectations and the backlash that a Palestinian identity
can carry and becomes universal. The Electronic Intifada contributor Uda
Olabarria Walker interviewed Jajeh before she opened her show in
Minneapolis in late February 2010.
Uda Olabarria Walker:
When you gave the show the title I Heart Hamas and Other Things I
am Afraid to Tell You and then launched at the NY Fringe festival
in 2008 what were you expecting would happen?
Jennifer Jajeh: First, I was worried no one would come
to the show. I also anticipated that there would be some people who
would be offended or upset by the title and that there would be some
resistance and backlash. Most people understood that title was a
provocative, tongue-in-cheek statement and that there was complexity to
the show beyond the title, however. In the end, I got pretty good
audience and press responses in New York and a fantastic response here
in San Francisco one year later.
UOW: The show traces the awakening of your identity, as
it becomes, as you have said, "Palestinianized, politicized and
radicalized." Can you expand on this?
JJ: I grew up with a split life, half Palestinian and
half American --where the two identities were very separate -- to
becoming an adult and combining the two. It wasn't until I went to
Palestine that I really figured out what it meant for me to be
Palestinian on a personal level and what part of that identity felt
vital for me. As far as becoming radicalized, it first had to do with
pure anger at what I experienced on the ground in Palestine, but now
it's about challenging the status quo both externally and
within the Palestinian community about what it means to be Palestinian
and raising the difficult questions. It was also really important for me
to claim my space as a Palestinian woman and look into what it means to
be a woman in my community and what the role of women is in the
struggle inside and outside that space. So, part of becoming radicalized
was also about being a Palestinian woman who openly challenges my own
community's ideas about women's roles, sexual mores and religious
affiliations and divides. This has been really liberating.
UOW: You share an honest and vulnerable perspective on
Palestinian identity. Can you talk a little about the vulnerability of
doing something so personal on stage?
JJ: The show has been seriously transformative and it
is very scary to put your own life experiences on stage. Each night you
relive those experiences and while some are funny, many are very
painful. The show is also very honest. You think that because it's your
own show, you can say whatever you want about yourself so why not make
yourself look good, right? The reality is that the show forces me to be
accountable. If I'm dishonest or misrepresent in any way people will not
be drawn into the story and take the ride with me. Since the show is my
personal, emotional and political journey I share all aspects of it:
that includes the shallow, ugly and not very politically correct
emotions that I never particularly wanted to share, but are very real. I
also talk very honestly about having feelings of anger and desire for
retribution for what's happening. I felt very vulnerable going publicly
to those deep, dark places but I realized that it was at these precise
moments in the show that most people in the audience understood and they
were right there with me.
UOW: You have commented before that early on you had
some unexpected backlash to the show. Where did this come from?
JJ: In the beginning, some of the Arab community and
Arab arts organizations were wary about publicly promoting or endorsing a
show with such a controversial title even though privately they were in
support. Of course this fear makes sense. Almost 10 years after [the
attacks on] 11 September we still feel the weight of heightened
anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia. Organizations were fearful of losing
funding or alienating their constituencies. This has created a climate
where Palestinian and Arab artists are still only supported on a large
scale when we represent ourselves as nonviolent and nonthreatening.
More surprisingly though was the censorship from the Palestinian artist
community. The idea of the show being at all cheeky, button-pushing and
irreverent was threatening to people. Some actually said I was being
irresponsible by airing internal Palestinian issues, using Hamas in the
title, or making light of Palestinian identity. People actually told me
to limit what I talked about and to have more digestible content! This
is absurd!
UOW: It also seems that people have come to the show
with certain expectations. I know some activists left thinking the show
wasn't politicized enough or wanted you to make a political statement.
What's your response to them?
JJ: They should write their own show. I didn't write
this show as a mission statement for any organization or political
perspective. The point of the show to explore my identity and the
triggers, pressures and complexity this identity holds for one
Palestinian in particular, me. The second half of the show is about me
coming to terms with the political part of my identity when I go back to
Ramallah at the beginning of the second [Palestinian] intifada. But
still, the politics are not the only thing that defines me as a
Palestinian. There are a variety of Palestinian experiences and if I can
get people to sit down and listen to just one of them for an hour and a
half, I see it as a major accomplishment. If I have been able to create
the space for people to explore the complexity of identity, I have also
done well. This is what I'm trying to do with the show; explore
identity and raise questions, not push a political agenda.
UOW: I read a comment online from someone who saw the
show and said "There is nothing particularly Palestinian about her,
except that she tells us she is." What's your reaction to this?
JJ: Well, it's hilarious that someone didn't like the
way that I represented my own identity but it's also pretty insulting
that someone who would challenge my Palestinian identity and argue that I
wasn't Palestinian enough. I don't know if this person expected me to
belly dance, smoke an argilah or wear a kuffiyeh
throughout the show, or what.
I state very clearly in the show's opening voiceover that "I am not
presenting the views or feeling of the average Palestinian, nor do I
have any idea what that even means." I felt it was important to put
forth very clearly this notion: that there is no prototypical
Palestinian. And, that identity is a hell of a lot more complex and
individual, and that this story is being told through the lens of a very
specific, individual experience. The first part of the show talks about
me carrying the weight of other people's expectations around my
Palestinian identity, feeling squeezed from all sides by these
expectations and dealing with people's often negative, stereotypically
racist and completely hilarious reactions to how I actually do express
that identity. The [person] who wrote that comment must have missed
that.
UOW: The beauty of the show for me is the surprisingly
emotional impact it has had on the audience around the issue of identity
in general.
JJ: Yes. I wasn't anticipating this response. There
were a lot of people from all walks of life who took away something
powerful from the show or keyed into some very personal aspects of the
issues of identity that the show brings up. From young Latina women to
gay Filipino men, I had tons of people sending me emails and messages
about how the show really touched on their own struggles of fitting in,
being ashamed of their backgrounds and where they came from, or just the
craziness of having a big, loud foreign family to contend with. Many
people were surprised at how my Palestinian-American experience was so
similar to their own experiences of being an outsider. Through this
connection, I was then able to take people on the journey to Palestine
in such a way that they could hear that story as well.
UOW: You have had some people coming to the show more
than once.
JJ: I have had many people come four or five times and
bring their friends. I got to the point where I told them they couldn't
come anymore or at least had to let me comp their tickets! But I'm happy
they felt the work is important, entertaining and relevant enough that
they wanted to experience it again with their friends.
UOW: This was your first foray into the medium of the
one-woman show. Looking forward, what do you think the role of your art
is or should be?
JJ: The role of my art is to push boundaries and to
talk about things people are afraid to talk about. I'm hugely interested
in people's emotional experiences and psychological processes and how
they relate to each other and define themselves. I want to get people to
think more deeply, have more empathy, compassion and understanding for
the next person. I also want them to push their own boundaries around
how they move through the world within their identities.