Location
6:15 Socializing, 6:30 Book Discussion
Everyone is welcome to join our discussion, even if you did not have time to read the article or listen to the podcast.
Join LWV ABC Book Club Zoom Meeting
- Meeting ID: 924 7032 1268
- Passcode: 854158
- Dial in: +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago) or +1 929 205 6099 US (New York)
Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America (2007) by Firoozeh Dumas
“Often hilarious, always interesting.” —The Providence Journal
“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
Funny in Farsi grew out of Firoozeh Dumas’ experience of moving to Southern California in 1972 at the age of seven. She originally intended her collection of essays as a gift to her children–to show them that our commonalities far outweigh our differences–and she wrote the book almost entirely in the hours before they woke for school.
Arriving with no firsthand knowledge of this country beyond her father’s glowing memories of his graduate school years here, Firoozeh learned to adapt to her new surroundings with a special eye to the more absurd elements of American culture. Funny in Farsi chronicles the American journey of Dumas’ wonderfully engaging family: her engineer father, a sweetly quixotic dreamer; her elegant mother, who never fully mastered English; her uncle, who combated the effects of American fast food with an array of miraculous American weight-loss gadgets; and Firoozeh herself, who as a girl changed her name to Julie, and encountered a second wave of culture shock when she met and married a Frenchman. 210 pages.
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.
Library Availability:
- Anoka Libray – ebook only through MELSA Overdrive
- Hennepin Library – 2 books, 2 ebooks
