Courtesy Tissa Hami pokes fun at her heritage and makes everyone in the audience a little uncomfortable — comedy gold.

There's one thing you need to know before going to see comedian Tissa Hami's stand-up routine: You're allowed to laugh. When Hami began her act almost five years ago, audiences weren't always so sure. Hami, 34, is a Muslim comic who makes jokes about topics such as airport security and taking people hostage.

“When I first started, it was just a year after 9-11, and people were just shocked to see a veiled Muslim woman onstage,” said Hami, who now lives in San Francisco. “People get now that I'm a comedian; I'm there to tell jokes; it's OK to laugh.”

She will perform at Trinity University as part of its Difficult Dialogues series. A question-and-answer session will follow.

Hami was born in Iran but grew up in Lexington, Mass., and earned degrees at Brown University and Columbia University. She decided to try stand-up comedy after 9-11.

“I was so tired of this one-dimensional image of Muslims. There was this idea that we were all terrorists, all fanatics, all fundamentalists. There was this idea that all Muslim women were oppressed,” she said. “I just wanted to speak out about that.”

Apart from a few other female Muslim comedians — Shazia Mirza, a Pakistani who lives in England, is perhaps the most well known — Hami doesn't have much competition.

“You hear females talk about dating, you hear male comedians talk about beer and their d**ks. You don't hear people talk about harems and stoning and mosques and Ramadan,” Hami said. “Why not tap into that material?”
One of the first comedians Hami admired was Margaret Cho, whom she saw on “Star Search.” Cho, is Korean-American, but her comedy focuses on being outside the mainstream.

And that's what Hami's act is about.

“I grew up Iranian in an all-white town; I went to expensive schools; I worked at big, white companies, so that's what I know, that's what I talk about,” she said. “It's been interesting for me and interesting to the audience to talk about these issues because they've never been talked about before.”

She said after shows, she gets compliments from everyone from Mexican Americans to bi-racial people to lesbians.
“I think it's because I talk about being an outsider, and those experiences are similar no matter what group you belong to,” she said.

For the most part, the reaction she gets from audiences of all races and religions is overwhelmingly positive. She does get hate mail, mostly from people who haven't seen her perform.

“They've just read about me and fill in the blanks,” she said.

Muslim students refused to go to a show at a college in Kentucky because they thought it was wrong for her to perform during Ramadan.

“What can I say? I wasn't aware of the clause in the Koran forbidding stand-up comedy during Ramadan,” Hami said.

Wearing a hijab onstage is part of Hami's act; she isn't a devout Muslim and doesn't normally wear one. She puts it on for the beginning of the show and takes it off halfway through.

“My point is when I'm veiled or not, I am the same person. I have the exact same voice, the exact same views,” she said.

Jessica Belasco | 210SA contributor