Maysoon Zayid likes to joke that her situation makes other people feel better about their lives. After all, she’s a brown-skinned, female, Muslim Palestinian with cerebral palsy. “If that doesn’t make you feel better about yourself,” she jokes, “Something’s really wrong with you!”
Yup. She’s got it coming at her from all sides. As she explained in her Audible memoir, Find Another Dream, she was robbed of oxygen by the drunken sot of a doctor who delivered her. She twitches incessantly, something she says is exhausting, and I believe her. She wasn’t supposed to be able to walk, but her father taught her how, by placing her feet upon his and walking her around the room, the way my father danced with me.
She got speech therapy to be clearly understood, and dance lessons instead of physio, which her parents couldn’t afford. And yet, when she announced in dance class that she wanted to dance professionally, her instructor patronisingly sneered, “Find another dream.”
Yeah, about that . . . . Not only has she danced and acted on Broadway, but she travels all over the world doing stand-up, appeared with Adam Sandler in Don’t Mess with the Zohan, and has a recurring role on General Hospital. And her TED Talk has, like, a hundred trillion views. You can check it out here.
Though American born, she travels to Palestine regularly, to act as an advocate for those who are suffering, especially the children. She’s somehow become the poster girl for many causes: women, brown people, Arabs, and the disabled, and manages to fill all those roles with great humour.
She has her own stuff going on on YouTube, too, like her video series, Advice You Don’t Want to Hear, and is a regular on celebrity talk shows and stand-up stages around the world. The book is short, but such fun that I went running to see what else she had out there.
You just got yourself a fan, girl!
Read it? Or are you reading something else you’d like to recommend. Tell us!
