Word: easternism
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...Minister Kwame Nkrumah broke into dance and then spoke of a dream finally realized. "Today, from now on, there is a new African in the world," he declared. "At long last the battle has ended. Ghana, our beloved country, is free forever." In Fodome, a small village in the eastern Volta region of the new nation, Kwame Deh, 22, and his family and friends gathered around a radio and listened through crackling static. "I felt very happy," remembers Deh. "The future was ours...
Kwame is sprightly for his age. When I first met him in April last year, he was wearing loose-fitting gold-colored trousers, a gold shirt and a small gold skullcap, all made from the same embroidered fabric. He welcomed me into his modest rented home on the eastern edge of Accra, Ghana's capital, pumping my hand with the energy and strength of a man 20 years younger. The living room was painted electric blue, and a gold vase of plastic flowers sat on the coffee table. There was a small television in the corner and a telephone that...
...fitting that each segment of Comedy Central's The Axis of Evil Comedy Special (March 10), the first TV stand-up show with all Middle Eastern--American comics, begins with each comedian walking onstage through a metal detector. The 9/11 attacks changed the airport from a place of comical annoyance to a place of suspicion and dread. "Whenever I get on a plane, I always know who the air marshal is," says Axis' Ahmed Ahmed. "He's the guy holding the PEOPLE magazine upside down, staring right...
...stretching it to say there was a silver lining in 9/11 for Middle Eastern Americans. But it did get them America's attention, and not just on cross-country flights. Save for the occasional terrorist or sheik stereotype, the pop-culture profile of this growing group had been almost nil. You might know that F. Murray Abraham or Danny Thomas had Middle Eastern ancestry, but it was trivia, like knowing that Dan Aykroyd was Canadian. There was no figure whose ethnicity deeply informed his or her work--no Arab-American Dick Gregory or Iranian-American Lenny Bruce...
There are flashes of Middle Eastern awareness emerging: the midseason sitcom Andy Barker, P.I. features an Afghan kebab-house owner who defensively festoons his shop with patriotic kitsch. Still, in Axis Aron Kader complains that even today he meets people who can't pronounce Palestine. "Come on! We're responsible for half the terrorism in the last 50 years!" he rants. "How many rocks do we have to throw...