Funny in Farsi A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America
By Firoozeh Dumas

n 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 melting pot. In a series of deftly drawn scenes, we watch the family grapple with American English (hot dogs and hush puppies? a complete mystery), American traditions (Thanksgiving turkey? an even greater mystery, since it tastes like nothing), and American culture (Firoozeh s parents laugh uproariously at Bob Hope on television, although they don t get the jokes even when she translates them into Farsi). Above all, this is an unforgettable story of identity, discovery, and the power of family love. It is a book that will leave us all laughing without an accent. Praise for "Funny in Farsi"