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Monday 6 January 2014

Maysoon Zayid: "I got 99 problems... palsy is just one."

"I have cerebral palsy. I shake all the time," say Maysoon Zayid at the beginning of this exhilarating, funny 'TED' talk.



"I'm like Shakira meets Muhammad Ali." The Arab-American comedian takes us on a tour of her adventures as an actress, stand-up comic, philanthropist and advocate for the disabled.
Maysoon is a writer, actor, and comedian, and the co-founder of the New York Arab-American Comedy Festival.
Here is the soon-to-be-viral video of her inspiring TED talk:

Maysoon told the BBC: "It became very obvious to me that in the United States of America, a fluffy ethnic disabled chick was never going to get a job unless she did stand-up."

A Palestinian woman from New Jersey, Zayid jokes about her family, global culture, and her life with cerebral palsy.

Along with Dean Obeidallah, she founded the New York Arab-American Comedy Festival, now in its 10th year. She spends several months of the year in the Palestinian Territories running workshops for disabled and orphaned kids in refugee camps, using art to help them deal with trauma.

What. A. Woman.

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