Muslim Feminist Drag: Spilling the “Chai” on Diasporic Khwaja Sira “Realness”

Abstract

ABSTRACT On April 18, 2023, the authors sat down together for an interview to unravel what happened at a drag show on January 27 at the Whiteside Theatre in Corvallis, Oregon. During the interview, Dharmakrishna Mirza highlighted the impact that her drag character, Hojabi, has on the university campus town community while facing backlash from various groups, including the show’s own producers, for her Muslim feminist portrayal of the character. Being in the audience that night, Trung M. Nguyen, a fellow Asian feminist artist and scholar, critically reflected on their holistic experience as a spectator of the show. This collaborative interview, hence, acts as a reenactment of the performance, invoking notions of First Gender, Khwaja Sira, and trans femme of color critiques coupled with non-Western performance theories and practices. Through the epistemological power of the performance-interview, the authors call attention to the subversive potentiality of Muslim drag as an art form and the drag artists, specifically Black, Brown, Indigenous, and people of color trans performers who keep pushing boundaries against the conservative backdrops of current politically extreme climates.