Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America

Firoozeh Dumas

Dec 2007 · Sold by Random House

About this ebook

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Finalist for the PEN/USA Award in Creative Nonfiction, the Thurber Prize for American Humor, and the Audie Award in Biography/Memoir

This Random House Reader’s Circle edition includes a reading group guide and a conversation between Firoozeh Dumas and Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner!

“Remarkable . . . told with wry humor shorn of sentimentality . . . In the end, what sticks with the reader is an exuberant immigrant embrace of America.”—San Francisco Chronicle

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 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
 
“Heartfelt and hilarious—in any language.”—Glamour
 
“A joyful success.”—Newsday
 
“What’s charming beyond the humor of this memoir is that it remains affectionate even in the weakest, most tenuous moments for the culture. It’s the brilliance of true sophistication at work.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review
 
“Often hilarious, always interesting . . . Like the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding, this book describes with humor the intersection and overlapping of two cultures.”—The Providence Journal
 
“A humorous and introspective chronicle of a life filled with love—of family, country, and heritage.”—Jimmy Carter
 
“Delightfully refreshing.”—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
 
“[Funny in Farsi] brings us closer to discovering what it means to be an American.”—San Jose Mercury News

Ratings and reviews

What a great essay! the story was so touching to me, a Korean engineer who had grown up with difficulty from poverty, raised two children and more than 50 now. It reads with ease, humor, love.

This is the first book I have finished that is not a children's book, I was assigned to read it for a college course. I loved it, I laughed, I cried, and will read more of Mrs. Firoozeh Dumas without it being an assignment, thank you to my wonderful teacher who assigned such a lovely read Mrs. Lisa Strahan! Beautiful simply beautiful!

I loved this book. I laughed a lot while reading it. It goes into the perspectives of American culture and experience as viewed through the eyes of Iranian traditions and viewpoints in a thoughtful yet humorous way.

About the author

Firoozeh Dumas lives in California, where she continues to tell stories. An entire generation of American school children have now read Firoozeh’s stories and have seen their own families represented and reflected. Her nerd dream came true on July 4, 2022, when she was a clue on Jeopardy.