Funny in Farsi

A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America

Paperback, 224 pages

English language

Published Jan. 13, 2004 by Random House Trade Paperbacks.

ISBN:
978-0-8129-6837-8
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4 stars (4 reviews)

In 1972, when she was seven, Firoozeh Dumas and her family moved from Iran to Southern California, arriving with no firsthand knowledge of this country beyond her father's glowing memories of his graduate school years here. More family soon followed, and the clan has been here ever since. Funny in Farsi chronicles the American journey of Dumas's wonderfully engaging family: her engineer father, a sweetly quixotic dreamer who first sought riches on Bowling for Dollars and in Las Vegas, and later lost his job during the Iranian revolution; her elegant mother, who never fully mastered English (nor cared to); her uncle, who combated the effects of American fast food with an army of miraculous American weight-loss gadgets; and Firoozeh herself, who as a girl changed her name to Julie, and who encountered a second wave of culture shock when she met and married a Frenchman, becoming part of a one-couple …

5 editions

Review of 'Funny in Farsi' on 'Storygraph'

5 stars

A gentle memoir. She portrays her family with love and admiration. Reminds us that the immigrant experience varies (her family first lived in US in 1972).

Especially liked reading about extended family (her father and his siblings all live close by even now). Her experiences are so unlike my West Coast, far from relatives, life.

Subjects

  • Personal Memoirs
  • Iranian American women
  • Biography/Autobiography
  • Biography & Autobiography
  • Biography / Autobiography
  • Women
  • United States
  • Iranian Americans
  • Ethnic Cultures - General
  • Biography & Autobiography / General
  • Biography
  • Immigrants