Note Type
Historical NoteNote
Maysoon Zayid (1974- ) is an Palestinian-American comedian, actress, and disability rights advocate. She is the first person to perform stand-up comedy in Palestine and Jordan, and is one of the first Muslim women comedians in the United States.
After growing up in New Jersey, she later earned her BFA from Arizona State University. Her first acting experience was a two year appearance on the soap opera As the World Turns, as well as guest appearances on popular shows such as NBC Nightly News, Law & Order, and 20/20. She is vocal of her experiences living with cerebral palsy and uses her platform to fight ableism. Because of the difficulty she faced building an acting career due to her ethnicity and disability, she began stand-up comedy and performed at various popular venues in New York, playing on material regarding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and terrorism. In 2003 she co-founded the annual New York Arab-American Comedy Festival alongside comedian Dean Obeidallah. She is proud to have provided comedic relief while performing in Palestine at the height of the Second Intifada. Her one-woman show Little American Whore debuted at the Comedy Central stage in Los Angeles in 2006, and in 2008 was chosen for the Sundance Screenwriters Lab. Maysoon was a special guest on the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour and served as a full-time contributor on "Countdown with Keith Olbermann.". Further, she is a co-host of the radio show Fann Majnoon (Crazy Art). Her viral Ted Talk, "I got 99 problems...palsy is just one," is a personal narrative of her experience living with cerebral palsy and was the number one Ted Talk of 2014. The lecture received millions of views online and cemented her place as one of the world's most recognized disability advocates. She is also featured in the documentary The Muslims are Coming! (2013), which documents various Muslim American comedians touring America in an effort to combat Islamophobia. In 2001 she founded Maysoon's Kids, an arts program for orphaned and disabled children living in refugee camps in Palestine, narrowing the gap between disabled and non-disabled children and teaching kids how to cope with trauma through art.