This is FRESH AIR. I’m Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross, who’s off this week. My guest, Mo Amer, is a comedian who brings a unique voice to his performances, rooted in his unusual background. Mo is short for Mohammed. He’s Palestinian, but he grew up in Kuwait, where his family enjoyed a comfortable life until he was 9, when the first Gulf War forced his family to flee to the United States in 1991. There, as he explained to Trevor Noah on “The Daily Show,” things were different.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, “THE DAILY SHOW WITH TREVOR NOAH”)
MO AMER: I went to a really nice, private British English school in Kuwait, and then we migrated to Houston, Texas. And…
TREVOR NOAH: That’s a culture shock.
AMER: It’s a culture shock. And they put me in ESL class, which is English as a second language class, and I was the only guy that spoke English in the class.