Mohammed (Mo) Amer was born in Kuwait to Palestinian parents. When he was nine years old, Amer, his mother, and two siblings fled Kuwait during the Gulf War and immigrated to the United States, settling in Houston, Texas. As a refugee, Amer had to wait 20 years to become a naturalized citizen and obtain a passport — a situation he has turned into comedy.
Today, Amer is an award-winning writer and stand-up comedian who has performed in over 27 countries on five continents. Mo, his semi-autobiographical Netflix series about a Palestinian refugee seeking asylum while living in Texas, won a Peabody Award, and was named one of the best of 2022 by both the New York Times and New York magazine.
Mo, the show’s central character, is a man in limbo, who’s never able to hold down a job or get health care because of his immigration status, and the way he casually flits through his life is reflective of that reality. Childhood flashbacks of Mo coming to the U.S. are important to the show’s narrative, Amer says, “to highlight how hard it is to assimilate in that culture, the things that you had to go through to feel seen, and to truly feel like you belong.”
Amer’s work promotes understanding between the cultures of the world. He’s proudly multicultural, and says, “I like salad bowl better than melting pot. Everybody loses their own identity in the melting pot. In a salad bowl, everything retains its original flavor.”
