Download Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America AudioBook Free
This new Readers Circle edition carries a reading group guide and a conversation between Firoozeh Dumas and Khaled Hosseini, writer of The Kite Runner,
In 1972, when she was seven, Firoozeh Dumas and her family moved from Iran to Southern California, arriving without 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 NEVADA, and later lost his job through the Iranian revolution; her elegant mother, who never fully mastered English (nor cared to); her uncle, who combated the consequences of American junk 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 another wave of culture shock when she met and married a Frenchman, becoming part of your 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 receive the jokes even when she translates them into Farsi).
Above all, this is an unforgettable story of identity, discovery, and the energy of family love. It is a book that will leave us all laughing--without an accent.
