#Zahra Noorbakhsh

[yourdailyqueer]

Zahra Noorbakhsh

Gender: Female

Sexuality: Bisexual

DOB: 11 June 1980

Ethnicity: Iranian

Nationality: American

Occupation: Comedian, writer, actor, podcaster, presenter

[bidotorg]

Step aside, world — Zahra Noorbakhsh is here to make you snort your coffee out your nose with laughter! 🤣🎤 This comedic firecracker is serving up spicy jokes hotter than a jalapeño on a summer day. From poking fun at cultural quirks to navigating the absurdities of everyday life, Zahra's wit is sharper than a katana in a sushi kitchen. Get ready to giggle, gasp, and possibly question your life choices — it's Zahra Noorbakhsh time, folks! 😄🎙️

[mishthi]

Mishthi Music is back with another mix to get you those mashallah feelings when you most need it. Inspired by Zahra Noorbakhsh’s show On Behalf of All Muslims, this mixtape is centering Muslim-ish voices that will inspire joy. Tracks include hip-hop beats (Narcy, DJ Khaled, Mona Haydar, Anik Khan), booty dance tracks (Shaggy, OCHOBOYZ) and pop ballads (Yuna, Leo Kalyan, ZAYN) and much much more.

You can also hear this mixtape at the pre-show for On Behalf of All Muslims: Comedy Special show on June 21-22 2019 at the Brava Theater for Women in the Arts in San Francisco. A show by award winning comedian Zahra Noorbakhsh, you can now use the code “ZAHRAGOLD” to get a discount.

Mixtape was curated by Taz Ahmed (www.tazzystar.me).

[nprfreshair]

Comedian Zahra Noorbakhsh prides herself on her fearlessness as a feminist, Iranian-American and Muslim. But the rise in hate crimes since the election had forced her to reduce the number of live performances and take extra precautions.  At one live event earlier this year, she turned to a childhood experience to help her remember what makes her brave.

Hear her commentary: 

In A Climate Of Fear, A Comedian Remembers What Makes Her Brave

Photo Credit: Harsh Mall 

[ladygeekgirl-and-friends]

After catching up with They Call Us Bruce last month, I found out that They Call Us Bruce is actually part of the Potluck Podcast Collective, a network of Asian-American-hosted podcasts that discuss both serious and more comedic Asian-American issues. Starved as I was for Asian-American content, I decided to check out the other podcasts and eventually settled on #GoodMuslimBadMuslim, a podcast about American Muslim issues hosted by Bengali-American Tanzila Ahmed and Iranian-American Zahra Noorbakhsh. I found it to be a funny and informative look into both current events and American Muslim concerns about said events. 

Read More

[zahracomedy-blog]

On behalf of 1.7 Muslims and growing, you’re welcome.

[laresearchette]

Sunday, October 06, 2019 Canadian TV Listings (Times Eastern)

WHERE CAN I FIND THOSE PREMIERES?: KIDS SAY THE DARNDEST THINGS (Global) 8:00pm BATWOMAN (Showcase) 8:00pm WITCHES OF SALEM (T&E) 8:00pm SUPERGIRL (Showcase) 9:00pm THE WALKING DEAD (AMC Canada) 9:00pm MADAM SECRETARY (Global) 10:00pm MR. ROBOT (Showcase) 10:00pm TALKING DEAD (AMC Canada) 10:00pm STAR WARS RESISTANCE (Disney Canada) 10:00pm HAUNTED GINGERBREAD SHOWDOWN (Food Network Canada) 10:00pm E! TRUE HOLLYWOOD STORY (E! Canada) 10:00pm

WHAT IS NOT PREMIERING IN CANADA TONIGHT PRESS (PBS Feed) ALASKA: THE LAST FRONTIER (TBD - Discovery Canada) GET SHORTY (TBD - Super Channel Fuse) MY WIFE'S SECRET LIFE (TBD - Lifetime Canada) RIVER OF NO RETURN (TBD - Discovery Canada) MATCHMAKER MYSTERIES (TBD)

NEW TO AMAZON PRIME/CRAVE/NETFLIX CANADA/CBC GEM:

AMAZON PRIME SUPER DINOSAUR (Season 2)

CBC GEM DOCUMENTARY NOW! (Season 2 - Comedy) PURE (Season 1 - Comedy) STOCKHOLM (Season 1 - Comedy) THE F WORD (RomCom) NHL HOCKEY (SN) 7:00pm: Jets at Islanders

MLS SOCCER (TSN5) 7:30pm: Montreal at NY Red Bulls (TSN/TSN4) 5:00pm: Whitecaps FC at Real Salt Lake (TSN2) 8:00pm: Toronto FC at Columbus  

HEARTLAND (CBC) 7:00pm: Jack is faced with painful memories from his past, and the family is at a loss for how to help him. I know...HORSIES!

ANNE WITH AN E (CBC) 8:00pm: As Easter approaches, Mary's illness brings change to Avonlea.

KIDS BAKING CHAMPIONSHIP (Food Network Canada) 8:00pm:  Four fan-favorite kid bakers return for a Halloween-themed competition and battle it out for a baker's dream prize package that includes a blast chiller.

ADRIANA TRIGIANI'S VERY VALENTINE (Lifetime Canada) 8:00pm: A woman tries to save her family's wedding shoe business that is teetering on the brink of financial collapse.

THE FIFTH ESTATE (CBC) 9:00pm: Some women from Quebec's youth protection system discover they're still haunted by the horrors of their treatment; Jayme Poisson digs into a new Canadian study about what caused dozens of Canadian and U.S. diplomats in Cuba to get sick.

SUMMER OF ROCKETS (BBC Canada) 9:00pm: Samuel learns the truth about the Shaws and the MI5 men.

PIPE DREAMS (Documentary) 9:00pm: Five young organists compete in the Canadian International Organ Competition.

PREDATORS IN PARADISE (Nat Geo Wild) 10:00pm:  British travellers' dangerous holiday encounters; polar bears, crocodiles, sharks and black mamba.

q (CBC) 12:00am: Carly Rae Jepsen reflects on her career as she releases her latest album; physicist Brian Cox is in talking about some exciting science; Zahra Noorbakhsh discusses how she developed her voice in comedy; Tim Baker performs.

[diaryofanangryasianguy]

03/04/19

Comedian Zahra Noorbakhsh On What’s Missing From The Conversation Around Louis C.K. And Kevin Hart’s Apologies

One of the biggest problems in the comedy world, Noorbakhsh says, is that "98 percent of comedy is developed at a bar or nightclub," which she believes fosters a misogynistic culture in which "the underdog is the guy at the bar trying to score."

"As a woman in that scene, I felt like I was always responding to either how f*ckable or unf*ckable I was," Noorbakhsh says. "I didn't have a language to kind of say, 'Oh, I'm being tasked with identifying myself with the male gaze at a bar and then proving that I could be funnier than them by being more crass.'”

[nprcrying]

Here are two things that are true at the same time. Terry Gross, host of WHYY’s Fresh Air ( @nprfreshair) is a national treasure, whose show has been important to me since I was, like, four. And also: some of the most uncomfortable moments on the show are when Gross speaks with people of color. Now that I work on a daily interview-style show, I get it a lot better than I used to: you’re representing the curiosity of listeners, a broad audience, not just yourself. Sometimes you go to uncomfortable places in order to give guests the chance to direct rebut (white) listener’s offensive or erroneous assumptions. In other words, hosts are just that: people who open the door for others. 

Still, I was disappointed when Gross’s perfectly reasonable question to Imam Khalid Latif, NYU and NYPD chaplain-- which could have been succinctly summarized as “do the younger Muslims you work with feel tension between how they’re raised in the U.S. and the way that Islam abroad is portrayed, as a religion that restricts the rights of women and gays?” or maybe “here in the U.S., we hear a lot about how Muslim women in some countries aren’t permitted to drive, or that the rights of gay people are curtailed; how do you think those images impact the identities of young U.S. Muslims?”-- instead included an awkward preamble that implied that Islam outside the West is, by default, “limiting and constricting.”

(Indeed, re-writing those questions above was much more challenging than I’d initially thought. Perhaps the best thing to do would have been to just eliminate the question, which itself presumes a lot: that we understand what feels “limiting and constricting” to people of other nations, that a U.S.-born Muslim would be a spokesperson for these cultural practices, that religions other than Islam are less invested in restricting the personal dress and behavior of their members.)

All of that said, I was moved by the transition from this interview, which ended when I had so many questions-- how does Latif feel being both the child of immigrants and part of a police department, when these identities have been politicized in opposite ways during the 2016 election? Does he encounter people who think he’s betraying his identity because he chose a career in law enforcement? Does he experience tension between working for the city of New York and knowing that extreme surveillance of Muslims took place in that very city?-- to this wonderful essay by Zahra Noorbakhsh. 

While I’ll admit that I’m an easy crier when it comes scenes of parental love, this essay portrays the love between parents and daughter as intertwined with a deep and compassionate self-love, a love that necessitates a spiritual love of the world. In turn, I love this essay because it captures the effort it takes to find mooring and connection in a political and economic environment that conquers us by snapping our ties. Echoing Imam Latif’s discussion of the various forms of the verb “to know” in Arabic, and the idea of “knowing” as also intimacy, what Latif calls a “deep acquaintanceship” or familiarity, Noorbakhsh distinguishes between the surface-level calm that one gets from meditation-for-white-professionals and the rootedness that comes from knowing that “the universe is unified by a force of compassion.” 

Meditation-for-white-professionals is, ultimately, about productivity (Noorbakhsh cleverly mentions that she hoped it would “improve [her] communication with co-workers”). Indeed, I myself-- raised a secular WASP-- have begun using it for that purpose; sometimes, I just need to calm the fuck down so I can get more shit done. But what does it mean to be productive when you’re facing violence? The opposite of violence isn’t productivity; it’s purpose, solidarity, and hope. In other words, peace. 

Despite my opening critique, it hasn’t escaped my notice that Fresh Air this week has featured incredible interviews with people of color. Honestly, I would listen to Nikole Hannah-Jones talk for hours. Even the rebroadcast of Zadie Smith’s Swing Time interview on inauguration day felt important. It was as if I was listening not only to Smith’s thoughts on the African diaspora but also to a conversation between the show’s producers, their back-and-forth over what to say or do on Jan. 20, 2017, and their ultimate decision to just leave a door open, quietly inviting listeners of all backgrounds to come in. 

I didn’t listen to the Smith interview on January 20th. I’d already listened during the initial broadcast, indeed already purchased and plowed through Swing Time (which I adored). I had been saving for that day, instead, the Jan 18th show featuring Imam Latif, Zahra Noorbakhsh, and Mat Johnson. Walking home through a too-warm Michigan night, I cried for Noorbakhsh, her family, and for what it will take for all of us, post-2016, to reconnect our souls to our bones. 

[natbrut]

Planning to be at #AWP this year? This Friday (6 P.M. to 8:30 P.M. at Ori Gallery), check out Beyond Resilience, a Nat. Brut and Lambda Literary-sponsored offsite #AWP19 event. The address is 4038 N. Mississippi Ave. in Portland, OR.

Beyond Resilience is a Sick, Disabled, Chronic Pain, & Mad Queer Showcase that is wheelchair accessible by ramp & a scent-free space.

Readers include Aurielle Marie, Natalie Sharp, Zahra Noorbakhsh, Heidi Andrea Restrepo Rhodes, Cyrée Jarrelle Johnson, Rachel McKibbens, and Kay Ulanday Barrett.

RSVP here: https://www.facebook.com/events/292880238056579

[dharaparmarunit5-blog]

Listening to Podcasts

Brown Girl Blues

By Princess Nokia

I liked the fact that it’s entirely self produced and is wonderfully edited

It is basically a no-bullshit guide to practising urban feminism.

The lack of formula in her podcasts is effective.

GoodMuslimBadMuslim

By Zahra Nootbakhsh

Its an intelligent political podcast that deals with the social burdens that weigh on American Muslims.

It’s a direct discourse between friends Taz Ahmed and Zahra Noorbakhsh and thats what makes it so relatable.

It’s refreshingly feminist.

[bidotorg]

Happy birthday to Zahra Noorbakhsh! Zahra Noorbakhsh is an Iranian-American comedian, writer, actor, and co-host of the #GoodMuslimBadMuslim podcast. #BiBirthdays

[molotov-tea-cosies]

CW: antagonism of Indigenous community, transmisogyny, transantagonism, ableism (also there was cissexism that I wasn't even gonna count cause weeee this shit is everywhere alll the time)

Went to the Manhaters: Women + Queers comedy show. Just posted this on their wall:

Zahra Noorbakhsh was hilarious. Especially the bit equating yt men to golden retrievers. That said, to go into a queer space and watch people deal out oppression for identities they do not have, is truly unfortunate, and not remotely edgy or funny. I'm speaking of the the comic making a joke about scoliosis and not claiming to have it, the comic who is not Indigenous and made a joke about Pocahontas and smallpox blankets, the comic who made the transmisogynistic joke about being a former 'gold star lesbian' and penises. As a genderfluid Indigenous (yeah...we still exist) persxn with disabilities, it became clear that these parts were just a reflection of dominant culture, which is unfortunately replicated in the queer community, shoving out the most oppressed and continuing to make us feel unsafe. 'It's just a joke.' Not when people are continuing to be murdered at disproportionate rates as the rest of the community. Especially Black and Indigenous trans women and Two-Spirits with disabilities. To anyone who doesn't think this was a problem, or that these jokes are somehow okay, my favorite N'Sync song is "Bye Bye Bye."

[nprfreshair]

After Trump's Election, A Non-Practicing Muslim Returns To Prayer

Comedian Zahra Noorbakhsh often jokes about being a "pork-eating, alcohol-drinking, married-to-an-atheist" Muslim. But lately she finds herself wanting to connect with her religious traditions.

Photo by Andria Lo

[somereallygreatthings]

In A Climate Of Fear, A Comedian Remembers What Makes Her Brave

In A Climate Of Fear, A Comedian Remembers What Makes Her Brave

A rise in anti-Muslim hate crimes made comedian Zahra Noorbakhsh uneasy about performing live. Then she remembered a childhood experience that helped her regain her footing. x