Firoozeh Dumas. Funny in Farsi. Random House, New York: 2003.

Book Review By: Jaquelyn McEwen

Funny in Farsi (Random House, New York:2003) is the humorous memoir of Firoozeh Dumas, an immigrant. In her book she tells the many stories that impacted her life growing up Iranian in America. Dumas’s story telling skills are entertaining and captivating for the reader. She has an innate ability to get a point across in a theatrical way and is also able to keep the seriousness of the situation. In the memoir she tells of the little things that she had to get used to being an immigrant and the misconceptions that came with not knowing the American language. Dumas also touches on happenings in her home country that made being an immigrant hard (Iran Hostage Crisis 1979). Dumas starts her memoir when her and her family first arrived in the United States at the age of seven.

The book shows that Dumas is a skilled writer and can be read by anyone. The language used in this book was very descriptive and set the scene well. For example, in one chapter she touched on the multitude of loose weight quick schemes offered in America. While reading of the numerous methods her uncle used I was able to visualize what was going on. This also made the things happening in the book quite funny and I constantly found myself laughing out loud.

Dumas’s writing style also showed how eccentric her family was in comparison to the Americans they encountered daily. She dedicated many of the pages of this book just describing how different her culture views the importance of family compared to the majority of America. Dumas was also able to explain in several occurrences in the book, how her loud family both embarrassed her and made her who she is today. She states in the later chapters of the book that her husband married her not in spite of her family but because of them.

Dumas clearly states (in the afterward) that she did not write this book because she had accomplished any great achievement, but she wrote it because she felt that everyone has a story to tell. Even though she many not feel she accomplished anything great I feel differently after reading this book. She became successful and overcame the many odds that were against her being an Iranian immigrant. Throughout the pages one can read time and again several occurrences that would have held most people back. Dumas on the other hand never gave up and always worked towards achieving a greater goal. One chapter, in particular, stands out to me in demonstrating this point “Girls Just Wanna Have Funds.” While I found this chapter humorous (like many of the other chapters in the book) she made a clear point that one must work hard for there goals, literally. In this chapter she tells of the many jobs that she acquired after worrying she would not be able to afford college at the age of fourteen. This chapter not only kept one laughing, but showed how difficult it was for her as an immigrant to find a good job.

Dumas also was able to portray several different aspects of American culture that she was able to experience. I felt that she was able to illustrate the problems her and her family faced like the multiple schemes (e.g. get rich quick games and loose weight quick) and other recreational activities (e.g. theme parks [particularly Disneyland], summer camp, and vacations) that they encountered in America without being offensive.

I really appreciated that Dumas took a more humorous approach writing about the several culture shocks she experienced moving to another country. It was refreshing and made reading the book easier. Unlike other immigration stories that I have read that make their point by focusing on all the horrible things that were happening Dumas was able to bring light to a sensitive subject. Instead of in a sense dreading what I was going to read next I looked forward to what she had to say. Her ability to use humor definitely worked to her advantage. It made the book fun and a page turner.

My one complaint about this book comes from its lack of chronological order. She jumped around a lot in the book making it hard for me to have a good reference to the time it was occurring. I don’t know if she did this because she felt that the specific date of certain stories was irrelevant and her point was really just what was happening. She did, however, put the dates for important happenings (e.g. first coming to America-1972, going to she the Shah-1977, and the Iran Hostage Crisis-1979).

I choose to read this book after I looked up some additional information on it. After reading several reviews about the book and Dumas’s uncanny ability to incorporate humor I thought it would be an enjoyable read. I was not let down. While the book is small it is packed with funny, serious, and “You’re mother-in-law said what?!” stories.

Overall, I feel that Dumas’s book was very well written and made several impacting points. She was able to show the treatment she received from her Iranian descent before complications with Iran and then after and she made, once again, a funny but powerful point in describing the injustice her family (and fellow Iranians in America) faced: “One kid throws a spitball and the whole class gets detention” (118). While it was here the book took a more serious turn she quickly turned it back to her funny light hearted style and kept optimism.

I personally have never read any books about Iran or Iranians. I found this book to be a nice intro to the culture and not so “in your face” about it. Dumas, allowed the reader to be comfortable and did not put blame on anyone to cause feelings of guilt. The reader was able to formulate their own opinions about the topic. The book was to the point and Dumas does not try to confuse the reader with extreme language. I feel that this is a good book to read that will not take you forever to get through.