Amal Kassir turns her lived experience as an American-born Muslim of Syrian heritage into fiery spoken word poetry and storytelling activism. Her work is urgent and decries hatred, violence, and discrimination of all kinds. But the heart of her work is also brimming with hope—a concept present in her very name. In Arabic, “Amal” means “hope,” and so she cannot take the stage without bringing a fundamental hopefulness along. “When we’re not asking someone their name,” she says, “we’re not asking them their story. So when the courageously curious do pop the what’s-your-name question, I try to make it worth their while.”
