Tasbeeh Herwees
⤏ IN CONVERSATION WITH ERIKA PAGET
⤏ PHOTOS BY EMILY BERKEY
⤏ ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED MARCH 2018
Tasbeeh Herwees is a writer and journalist, curator, and a longtime social activist — although she would probably call herself a creative, native Angeleno with a passion for using her voice whenever and wherever she can. As a fellow woman of color in this current political climate, I sat down with Tasbeeh to discuss the challenges she faces, both personally and culturally, and how easy it is to feel emotionally drained when your identity is placed firmly in being a child of immigrants and a woman of color.
ERIKA: Do you find that you feel pressured to be politically-driven?
TASBEEH: I think especially when you come from like, an immigrant community, you’re coming from this kind of collectivist mentality where you do whatever is best for everybody all the time. And anything else outside of those two impulses is probably a negative impulse or is like, useless or kind of frivolous.
E: You probably had a similar upbringing to mine where your college major or whatever you studied couldn’t be too frivolous.
T: For my parents it was like, “It’s great that you want to be a writer, it won’t take up too much of your time —” which was a lie — “And then you’ll have more time for your family, time for your husband, more time to take care of yourself.” But I’m just following whatever I enjoy. That’s something I had to learn. My journey was so weird. I dropped out of high school sophomore year and then got my GED and went to community college and went to USC for four extra years. Do you feel like you have to do everything politically?
E: Yeah, it’s really frustrating. It’s exactly what you were saying where you feel like you’re responsible for everyone and you have to be the voice of many even though, like, I would really prefer to be the voice of just me. It feels like we don’t have time to be playful anymore.
T: Yeah! Like, we’re not allowed to be playful because growing up as a Black or brown person, you’re hyperaware of everything that’s shitty in the world and you have to make up for how unaware your white peers are. No matter how well-intentioned they are. Even your nicest white friend will book a show and it’s all white indie guys or all white writers and you have to be the person that asks, “Why did you do that?”
E: It’s such a luxury to not even have to think about it.
“Who else is going into the mosque and telling these girls, you can write for Teen Vogue?”
T: As a writer in this industry, I don’t actually come in contact with a lot of Muslim writers or a lot of Black or brown writers. There are groups and different kinds of networks that we’ve created to help kind of put us in contact with each other, but we’re still so disparate.
E: And you’re working on a lighter show now.
T: I needed to do something that wasn’t about my identity. I mean, there’s also other facets of my identity. I’m not just Muslim, I’m also a woman, I’m also from LA, I have all these other interests and you just get categorized in one thing and it’s a lot easier for me to convince someone to let me do a Muslim ban reading rather than like, something about dating. Because that’s what people want from me specifically.
The other part of me feels like I’m often the only Muslim in a lot of spaces, or often the only practicing or self-identifying Muslim, in a lot of spaces. But I don’t want to represent all of us. I think there should be 12 of us, 50 of us, of all kinds of different styles, of all manners of practicing, in the same space. And even in a lot of spaces, you get maybe the alt-Muslim girls, but you’re not getting the girls who really suffer from the stigma. So for me it’s two-fold. It’s not only that I want to do other things, but there’s like, two communities that aren’t trying to entirely claim me. But you have a responsibility as the only person in the room where it’s like, who else is going to organize a Muslim ban reading?
E: It feels like, if not you, no one. But it’s a lot of pressure to have to process all the time.
T: I’ve had a measure of privilege that a lot of the girls I grew up with in Mosque didn’t benefit from. And now that I’m here — now that I’ve been given the acceptance of these writer and art communities — and I look around and there’s no one else, it’s like, who else has access to both these communities? Who else is going into the Mosque and telling these girls, you can write for Teen Vogue?
E: Do you feel, like when you do events in response to politics, you find it’s a healing moment? Or is it creating an immediate space for your community?
T: It’s both! There are studies done on Black communities, people who have to process a lot of trauma. White people may not be aware of every Black person shot by the police, but Black people are hyperaware, and they’re processing that knowledge constantly. It’s the same thing if you’re Muslim or Arab, you’re processing the knowledge of war in your country or hate crimes or surveillance, constantly. That shit is stressful! It’s hard because LA doesn’t have one Muslim community, but 12 Muslim communities, and it’s hard to build connections between people, so it’s nice to be able to, in those moments, bring people together.
E: You’re basically building a community where there almost isn’t one!
T: I think about it more like community building rather than activism.
E: I feel like once the Trump presidency began, I was quickly reminded how different I am from so many people in this country and that was sort of my first pull into activism.
T: I think I was more of an activist when I was younger — and by activist, I mean just showing up more to protests. I feel like I’ve done that for a really long time. Not to say I’m done with it, because I definitely still show up for causes. But I think now a lot of Black and brown writers get labeled as activists, but really what we’re doing is advocating for ourselves and advocating for our communities.
“I think about it more like community building rather than activism.”
E: It’s almost like it’s so controversial for communities to want to uplift their own that it becomes activism. It’s like, radical.
T: And in the journalism community, being called an activist is almost a slur because you have to be objective. So you get once again pigeonholed into this label and, if you’re an activist, anything you write gets disregarded on that basis. It’s not [considered] real journalism. It’s almost like my work doesn’t matter.
E: Do you feel like in your writing, you can’t have an opinion on anything related to your culture or else it’s dismissed?
T: Yeah, I also feel like my relationship with a lot of editors is them coming to me when a Muslim person is being oppressed somewhere. I had an editor call me a one-trick-pony because I was writing about music, but it was selectively Black and brown artists. And he wouldn’t say that if I was writing about twenty different white indie bands.
E: And that’s probably really discouraging to young writers who don’t have experience and then are immediately pigeonholed into one type of content.
T: Yeah, and the thing is, when you look at my portfolio, it’s extremely diverse. It’s about everything — movies, music, white artists. You’re just reaching out to me because you know me as the Muslim writer, but you haven’t shown any interest in me or my career. I’ve had a lot of curators reach out asking me to curate this Muslim thing or this Arab thing, but it’s because I’m the only brown person they know. But I want more opportunities. I want to curate an exhibit about, like, dating.
E: You want to be able to have that levity.
T: Yes! I want to write about wedgie fetishes! My editor let me write a piece about Instagram being like a little black book and that’s the first time I’ve gotten to write about dating, without it being from the perspective of like, you’re a Muslim! You date?!
E: Everyone wants to go out with people.
T: Yeah, I don’t have experiences that are like, radically different than everyone else’s. I’m dealing with the same shitty experiences everyone is.
E: You want to feel like people are coming to you because they want your abilities and not your identity.
T: It’s the responsibility of spaces to be like, you can do this Muslim event here, but you can also do a thing about dating. I just want someone to hit me up and be like, can we talk about [Young Thug]’s new album? Can we talk about literally anything else?
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⤏ ERIKA PAGET (SHE/HER) IS A WRITER, ARTIST, AND CURATOR LIVING IN LOS ANGELES. SHE LOVES HER CAT.