Funny in Farsi

EW YORK TIMESBESTSELLER • Finalist for the PEN/USA Award in Creative Nonfiction, the Thurber Prize for American Humor, and the Audie Award in Biography/Memoir

This Random House Reader’s Circle edition includes a reading group guide and a conversation between Firoozeh Dumas and Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner!

“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

In 1972, when she was seven, Firoozeh Dumas and her family moved from Iran to Southern California, arriving with no 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 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 encountered 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).

Above all, this is an unforgettable story of identity, discovery, and the power of family love. It is a book that will leave us all laughing—without an accent.

Praise for Funny in Farsi

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

“A joyful success.”—Newsday

“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

“A humorous and introspective chronicle of a life filled with love—of family, country, and heritage.”—Jimmy Carter

“Delightfully refreshing.”—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“[Funny in Farsi] brings us closer to discovering what it means to be an American.”—San Jose Mercury News

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 – Leffingwell Elementary School

Chapter 2 – Hot Dogs and Wild Geese

Chapter 3 – In the Gutter

Chapter 4 – Save Me, Mickey

Chapter 5 – With a Little Help from My Friends

Chapter 6 – Bernice

Chapter 7 – A Dozen Key Chains

Chapter 8 – You Can Call Me Al

Chapter 9 – Of Mosquitoes and Men

Chapter 10 – The “F Word”

Chapter 11 – Waterloo

Chapter 12 – America, Land of the Free

Chapter 13 – The Ham Amendment

Chapter 14 – Treasure Island

Chapter 15 – It’s All Relatives

Chapter 16 – Me and Bob Hope

Chapter 17 – I Ran and I Ran and I Ran

Chapter 18 – 1-raynians Need Not Apply

Chapter 19 – Girls Just Wanna Have Funds

Chapter 20 – The Wedding

Chapter 21 – I Feel the Earth Move Under My Feet

Chapter 22 – A Nose by Any Other Name

Chapter 23 – Judges Paid Off

Chapter 24 – If I Were a Rich Man

About the Author

Firoozeh Dumas lives in California, where she continues to tell stories. An entire generation of American school children have now read Firoozeh’s stories and have seen their own families represented and reflected. Her nerd dream came true on July 4, 2022, when she was a clue on Jeopardy.