Zainab Johnson has a theory about her success, and she calls it “the Zainab effect”—her uncanny ability to level up even the most busted situations into something worth watching. It’s a fitting explanation for how a woman who started doing open mics at hookah lounges has turned brutal honesty about her identity into a thriving comedy career.
Johnson credits her success to a simple approach: She got on stage and told the truth. She’s Muslim. Her parents have 13 kids—same mother, same father. People laugh. So she came back the next day and shared more stories. She’s been doing it for 14 years now, longer than she’s done anything else except, as she puts it, living.
But Johnson’s path to comedy wasn’t exactly clear to her. Growing up, she watched Whitney Houston, TLC, and Beyoncé. What she didn’t see was a “dope a** Muslim woman on TV,” she explains on Let’s Try This Again with B. Simone. ”There was nothing telling me that was okay for me.”
That absence of representation became both her pain point and her purpose. At 13, Johnson stopped wearing her hijab—partly rebellion against her parents, partly exhaustion with being prejudiced by strangers. Now, as an adult, she’s determined to be what she never had: visible proof that Muslim women can take up space however they choose.
