Reviews: Aasif Mandvi’s ‘No Land’s Man’ and Maz Jobrani’s ‘I’m Not a Terrorist, but I’ve Played One on TV’

posted on: Mar 18, 2015

There’s a loaded moment in Maz Jobrani’s new memoir, “I’m Not a Terrorist, but I’ve Played One on TV,” in which this Iranian-American comic finally catches a break in the stand-up world. It’s 1999, and he’s been invited by Mitzi Shore, owner of the Comedy Store in Los Angeles, to become a regular at her venerable club.

There’s a catch, he discovers. Ms. Shore wants him to perform in a turban and a robe. “Was this racist?” Mr. Jobrani writes. “Was there a word for being both flattered and insulted at once?” Wearing this garb onstage is “the Persian equivalent of blackface.” He reluctantly agrees to do it. A man needs to eat. Luckily, Ms. Shore soon agrees it’s a bad idea.

There’s a similar moment in “No Land’s Man,” a new book from Aasif Mandvi. He’s best known for being, as he puts it, the “senior Middle East/Muslim/All Things Brown correspondent” on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.” New to New York City and scrounging for work, he wears a turban and does a broad Indian accent while auditioning to be a snake charmer in a television ad. (Mr. Mandvi was born in what is now Mumbai but grew up in England and the United States.) The emotion he feels is shame.

While discussing this and the other roles — cabdrivers, terrorists, deli owners — he was asked to play, Mr. Mandvi quotes a friend’s useful term for acting out painful racial stereotypes in order to find work. That term is “patanking.” It derives from the way the Indian accent sounds to American ears.

Source: mobile.nytimes.com