Persian Giggles

My job requires me to talk about books and reading. You can imagine how much I hate this (read: sarcasm). Well a week ago I told a coworker to pick out a book for me to read. Something that maybe I would not read on my own, but wasn’t leaps and bounds out of my comfort zone. She gave me Funny in Farsi by Firoozeh Dumas.

The book is a memoir of Dumas’s experience growing up as an Iranian in America. It focuses on her family, with an emphasis on her father, and her experiences as a foreigner in this country. Her family originally moved to California before the Iranian Revolution, so her experiences before and after those events took place completely changes her outlook on life in the US. Although it has its serious points, this is a fun read. From going to a sleep away summer camp to bringing stuffed grape leaves to school events, Dumas’s retelling is humorous and light hearted.

Although I was not laughing out loud, I did find the light tone of the book easy to read and fun to pick up. Dumas speaks to the reader in an accessible way and although her family’s cultural background is very different from my own, her stories rang a bell. I found myself nodding along as she retold her stories of family eccentricities because they sounded a lot like things my family did or would do.

If you’re up for something light and enjoy a different perspective on our American life, try Dumas’s book.

Here are some similar reads:

• Laughing Without an Accent: adventures of an Iranian American, at home and abroad by Firoozeh Dumas

• Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

• Journey from the Land of No: A girlhood caught in revolutionary Iran by Roya Hakakian

• Lipstick Jihad: A memoir of growing up Iranian in America and American in Iran by Azadeh Moaveni