From Publishers Weekly
This lighthearted memoir chronicles the author's move from Iran to America in 1971 at age seven, the antics of her extended family and her eventual marriage to a Frenchman. The best parts will make readers laugh out loud, as when she arrives in Newport Beach, Calif., "a place where one's tan is a legitimate topic of conversation." She is particularly good making gentle fun of her father, who loves Disneyland and once competed on the game show Bowling for Dollars. Many of the book's jokes, though, are groan inducing, as in, "the only culture that my father was interested in was the kind in yogurt." And the book is off-kilter structurally. After beginning with a string of amusing anecdotes from her family's first years stateside, one five-page chapter lurches from seventh grade in California to an ever so brief mention of the Iranian revolution, and then back to California, college and meeting her husband. In addition, while politics are understandably not Dumas's topic, the way she skates over the subject can seem disingenuous. Following the revolution, did her father really turn down the jobs offered to him in Iran only because "none were within his field of interest"? Despite unevenness, Dumas's first book remains a warm, witty and sometimes poignant look at cross-cultural misunderstanding and family life. Immigrants from anywhere are likely to identify with her chronicle of adapting to America.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From School Library Journal
Adult/High School-Dumas first came to the U.S. from Iran in the early '70s when her father was sent to California on a two-year contract from the National Iranian Oil Company. Her family soon discovered that his presumed skill in English was basically limited to "vectors, surface tension and fluid mechanics." In short, humorous vignettes, the author recounts their resulting difficulties and Americans' almost total ignorance of Iran, illustrating the kindness of people and her father's absolute love of this country. After a brief return to Iran, they came back. This time, however, they were mistrusted and vilified, as a result of the Iranian hostage crisis. Her father lost his job and was forced to sell most of their possessions. Even this harsh treatment didn't diminish his love for the U.S., and they later reestablished themselves, though with a lower standard of living. Throughout, Dumas writes with a light touch, even when, after having been flown to DC by the state department to welcome the shah, they faced death threats and had to leave town. Her descriptions of American culture and her experiences with school, TV, and language (she was once called "Fritzy DumbAss" by a receptionist) could be the observations of anyone new to this country, and her humor allows natives and nonnatives alike to look at America with new insight.Susan H. Woodcock, Fairfax County Public Library, Chantilly, VACopyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Dumas came to America for the first time in the early 1970s, when many Americans were unfamiliar with Iran. She and her family spent much of their time correcting misconceptions about Iran--no, it's not in the Sahara; no, they didn't live in a tent; and no, they didn't own camels. After the Iranian revolution, the attitude of Americans changed, and Dumas and her family faced downright hostility from formerly friendly Americans. Her father even lost his job. She saw American conjecturing work in a very different way after she met her French husband-to-be, Francois, who was assumed to be cultured and well read. Dumas peppers her memoir with amusing anecdotes about her family's experiences in America--her uncle's attempts to lose the pounds that fast food has added to his figure, her family's dismay at being served turkey, and her own misery at summer camp. Dumas has a unique perspective on American culture, and she effortlessly balances the comedy of her family's misadventures with the more serious prejudices they face. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
“What’s charming beyond the humor of this memoir is that it remains affectionate even in the weakest, most tenuous moments for the culture. It’s the brilliance of true sophistication at work.”
—Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Often hilarious, always interesting . . . Like the movie 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding,'this book describes with humor the intersection and overlapping of two cultures.”
—The Providence Journal

“Heartfelt and hilarious—in any language.”
—Glamour

“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

"A humorous and introspective chronicle of a life filled with love--of family, country, and heritage."
-Jimmy Carter


Review
?What?s charming beyond the humor of this memoir is that it remains affectionate even in the weakest, most tenuous moments for the culture. It?s the brilliance of true sophistication at work.?
?Los Angeles Times Book Review

?Often hilarious, always interesting . . . Like the movie 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding,'this book describes with humor the intersection and overlapping of two cultures.?
?The Providence Journal

?Heartfelt and hilarious?in any language.?
?Glamour

?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

"A humorous and introspective chronicle of a life filled with love--of family, country, and heritage."
-Jimmy Carter

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
When seven-year-old Firoozeh Dumas's family moved to Whittier, California, from Iran in 1972, they didn't plan to stay. A former graduate student in Texas, Dumas's father had strong memories of America and wanted his children to spend some time growing up in the land of spotless freeway rest stops and grocery store sample trays laden with pigs-in-blanket. After several years, they returned to their homeland, only to be swept up in the Iranian Revolution. With so much uncertainty about life in Iran, the family moved back to Southern California for good, and aunts, uncles, and cousins soon followed. Dumas depicts her and her relatives' encounters with American culture in comic vignettes that reveal a wonderful storytelling talent. From her uncle's discovery of fast food (and then, predictably, fad diets) to her father's insistence on performing his own imperfect home repairs to her own adoption of the first name Julie, Dumas turns anecdotes into amusing episodes that also illustrate the challenges of assimilating while trying to retain the unique cultural characteristics that make us all different. Katherine Hottinger

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"In 1972, when she was seven, Firoozeh Dumas and her family moved from Iran to Southern California, arriving with no first-hand 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 chronciles the American journey of Dumas's family: her engineer father, a sweetly quixotic dreamer who first sought riches on Bowling for Dollars and in Las Vegas, and later lost his job during the Iranian revolution; her elegant mother, who never fully mastered English (nor cared to); her uncle, who combated the effects of American fast food with an army of miraculous American weight-loss gadgets; and Firoozeh herself, who as a girl changed her name to Julie, and who encounted a second wave of culture shock when she met and married a Frenchman, becoming part of a 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 get the jokes even when she translates them into Farsi).

FROM THE CRITICS

The New Yorker

The Turkish novelist and translator Güneli Gün grew up on an Aegean island once used to quarantine pilgrims returning from Mecca. In Remembering Childhood in the Middle East: Memoirs From A Century of Change, an anthology edited by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea, Gün recalls her anger at her parents' refusal to love Quarantine Island. Her mother missed cosmopolitan social life; her father, a doctor, ridiculed his staff and railed about " 'the agony of the East,' by which he meant the scientific backwardness he believed Islam had 'brought upon' us." Amid the jarring disruptions of life in Tehran during the nineteen-eighties, Marjane Satrapi could at least confide in her parents. Her comic-book memoir, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, describes her pain at seeing her country descend into fundamentalism and violence. Satrapi was patriotic; she was relieved to see her father cheer when the BBC confirmed that Iranian bombers had hit Baghdad. Later, though, the slogans scrawled on city walls "To die a martyr is to inject blood into the veins of society") made her fearful that the country's turn toward bellicosity was too extreme. Firoozeh Dumas' family left Iran permanently in 1976, and missed the seismic shifts back home. In Funny In Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian In America, Dumas remembers how in 1977 her parents accepted an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington, D.C., to welcome the Shah. Undeterred by a threatening note slipped under their hotel-room door ("Dear Brainwashed Cowards, You are nothing but puppets of the corrupt Shah . . ."), the family finally reassessed the trip after demonstrators attacked Iranians on a lawn near the White House with nail-studded sticks. Their response? To take the first flight back to California. (Kate Taylor)

Publishers Weekly

This lighthearted memoir chronicles the author's move from Iran to America in 1971 at age seven, the antics of her extended family and her eventual marriage to a Frenchman. The best parts will make readers laugh out loud, as when she arrives in Newport Beach, Calif., "a place where one's tan is a legitimate topic of conversation." She is particularly good making gentle fun of her father, who loves Disneyland and once competed on the game show Bowling for Dollars. Many of the book's jokes, though, are groan inducing, as in, "the only culture that my father was interested in was the kind in yogurt." And the book is off-kilter structurally. After beginning with a string of amusing anecdotes from her family's first years stateside, one five-page chapter lurches from seventh grade in California to an ever so brief mention of the Iranian revolution, and then back to California, college and meeting her husband. In addition, while politics are understandably not Dumas's topic, the way she skates over the subject can seem disingenuous. Following the revolution, did her father really turn down the jobs offered to him in Iran only because "none were within his field of interest"? Despite unevenness, Dumas's first book remains a warm, witty and sometimes poignant look at cross-cultural misunderstanding and family life. Immigrants from anywhere are likely to identify with her chronicle of adapting to America. (On sale June 17) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

VOYA - Lora Morgaine Shinn

Dumas enters the well-populated world of memoirs here but does so with memorable style and wit that will entertain the most reluctant of teen readers. She describes her unique childhood as an Iranian-born outsider in America's suburbs, dealing with teasing from classmates and adults alike, anti-Iranian prejudice, being a "secular ham-eating Muslim" in a predominantly Christian society, and being part of a wacky family enthralled with America's splendors, as exemplified by Disneyland, Bob Hope, and Price Club. From early childhood as a girl renamed "Julie" to adulthood, Dumas's biography conveys well the struggles with language, culture, and ethnic issues common to many immigrant families. Although much of the memoir takes place in the 1970s and 1980s and includes historical issues, readers will find many parallels to today's conflicts. For example, when anti-Iranian emotions run high in the late 1970s, Dumas's family pretends to be Russian or Turkish to end persistent questions and interrogations from American strangers. Dumas's challenges are conveyed with wit, exemplified by a friend bringing her to show-and-tell, greatly disappointing the teacher who was expecting a Peruvian student. Much of the quirky material sounds as if it would fit well on NPR's This American Life. Aimed at an adult audience, this memoir will nonetheless appeal to teen readers struggling with fitting in and finding a place in mainstream society. The vocabulary and subject matter might appeal more to older readers in this book that is recommended for public libraries and high schools. VOYA Codes: 4Q 3P S A/YA (Better than most, marred only by occasional lapses; Will appeal with pushing; Senior High, defined asgrades 10 to 12; Adult-marketed book recommended for Young Adults). 2003, Villard, 187p.; Illus., and Trade pb. Ages 15 to Adult.

Library Journal

Dumas, who first came to America from Iran as a young girl in 1972, recounts many anecdotes about her family's adjustment to this country in a light, humorous style. Detailed here are her uncle's encounter with all-American fast food (with disastrous consequences for his waistline) and her father's penchant for pursuing freebies wherever he could find them. Though the tone stays gentle, Dumas also includes darker episodes, such as her father's inability to find a job during the Iran hostage crisis and her family's nearly being beaten by protesters when they are in Washington, DC, to welcome the shah. Dumas also provides a few glimpses of middle-class life in prerevolutionary Iran, where her father enjoyed watching American Westerns as a boy and her uncle was a successful doctor. Today, as Middle Easterners in the United States are subject to racial profiling, stereotyping, and sometimes violence, this book provides a valuable glimpse into the immigrant experiences of one very entertaining family. Recommended for public libraries.-Debra Moore, Cerritos Coll., Norwalk, CA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

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