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

Title: Funny in Farsi
Author: Firoozeh Dumas
Publication: Villard, hardcover, 2003
Genre: Memoir
Setting: California

Description: This warm and witty memoir tells the story of an Iranian family and its enthusiastic misadventures with life in America, embracing Thanksgiving and game shows on television, learning English with bafflement, and the author’s eventual marriage to a Frenchman she met at Cal Berkeley, which resulted in even more of a melting pot experience. Firoozeh’s father Kazem had come to the United States on a Fulbright to study engineering before returning to Iran to marry and start a family. He also began a career with the National Iranian Oil company and in 1972, when the opportunity came to spend two years in California, he enthusiastically moved his wife and two children to Whittier (named after the Quaker writer John Greenleaf Whittier). Firoozeh and her mother spoke no English but she began second grade and soon became her mother’s interpreter. Kazem’s belief that America was a place where anyone, no matter how humble his background, could thrive permeates the story and enables the family to overcome obstacles in the way.

My Impression: I have been working one or two weekend days per month as a librarian and recently I was in the Children’s Room and wound up in conversation with a very well-read 12-year-old and her mother. Elizabeth reminded me of my younger self and she had read most of the Betsy-Tacy books, which is unusual. I wrote down several books I thought she would like and she and her mother recommended Funny in Farsi, which I found absolutely delightful and would never have come across on my own. The author’s fond recollections of her family’s experiences being Iranian in America had me laughing on every page:

A few weeks later, our washing machine broke. A repairman was summoned and the leaky pipe was quickly replaced. My mother wanted to know how to remove the black stain left by the leak. “Y’all are gonna hafta use some elbow grease,” he said. I thanked him and paid him and walked with my mother to the hardware store. After searching fruitlessly for elbow grease, I asked the salesclerk for help. “It removes stains,” I added. The manager was called.

Once the manager finished laughing, he gave us the disappointing explanation. My mother and I walked home empty handed. That, I later learned, is what Americans call a wild-goose chase.

More seriously, after November 4, 1979, when Iranian students seized the embassy and took more than 50 Americans hostage, Firoozeh (who had renamed herself Julie by now) and her family experienced a backlash against Iranians. Her father lost his job and had several bad experiences being hired for other engineering positions, then rejected at the last minute when his nationality was revealed. As the family finances became desperate, he was hired by an American firm at half his previous salary. Firoozeh realized her parents were not going to be able to pay for her college education and she began working odd jobs at 14 with limited success:

As college approached, I stumbled on a talent better than selling popcorn or polishing silver. I started writing scholarship essays. I wrote essay after essay about my life and my dreams and my goals. I wrote about volunteering as a clown at a children’s hospital. I wrote about being my mother’s interpreter. I wrote that ever since I was a little girl, I had wanted to go to college. And I wrote that my aunt Sedigeh should have been able to go to college but instead had to get married when she was fourteen.

And the funds just flowed in.

Her exuberant depiction of these experiences led to a successful writing career but she wrote this book to capture the family stories from Iran and Southern California for her children. Jimmy Carter, whose presidency was partly doomed by the hostage crisis, provided a blurb for this book, “A humorous and introspective chronicle of a life filled with love – of family, country, and heritage.” I’d love to know how the manuscript got in his hands, wouldn’t you? It’s customary for editors and authors to ask their well-known writers and acquaintances for quotes so I am guessing someone at Villard must have had a connection to President Carter or one of his former advisors.

Thank you to Elizabeth and her mother for this recommendation!

Source: Library