Funny in Farsi
by Firoozeh Dumas
An Iranian family in California. Dad is an eternal optimist.
For you if
you want to understand the Iranian American immigrant experience through someone who survived it by laughing
⚡ Choose Your Route ⚡
Not sold directly on this site. Support indie bookstores with a new copy, or go sustainable with a used one.
Buy New on Bookshop.orgSupports independent bookstores
— OR —
Find Used on Better World BooksSecondhand & sustainable
$19 MSRP
Reference price shown. Other editions may be available.
Dumas arrived in California from Iran at age seven, not speaking a word of English. Her father was an optimist of extraordinary proportions. This memoir — told in linked comic essays — is the dispatch from inside the Iranian American immigrant experience at its most human: the confusion, the adaptation, the specific humor of a family that approached every absurdity with curiosity rather than bitterness. The most accessible Iranian dispatch on the adult shelf and the one that makes the most people feel like they understand something they didn't before.
Where This Book Lives
- Setting
- Iran • Middle East
- Voice
- Written by a Iranian author
- Topics
- iranian diaspora
Part of a Reading Journey
Related Viewing
Shares a topic, theme, or setting with this book in the catalog.
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe(2023)
dir. Aitch Alberto
One summer, secrets neither boy knew he had.
In 1987 El Paso, two Mexican-American teenage loners strike up a friendship that cracks open everything one of them has spent years keeping carefully closed off — including who he is. Adapted from Benjamin Alire Sáenz's novel.
Why it’s here: Punk in its tenderness rather than its edge — a bilingual, bicultural, queer coming-of-age story that doesn't need trauma to justify its own gentleness. Pedagogical in showing how friendship can crack open a kid who's spent years protecting himself by staying closed.
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress(2002)
dir. Dai Sijie
Banned books, secret readings, and one crush.
Two city students sent to a remote mountain village for Maoist "re-education" during the Cultural Revolution discover a hidden suitcase of banned Western novels — and use them to woo the local tailor's granddaughter. Adapted from Dai Sijie's own novel.
Why it’s here: Punk in treating banned Western novels as genuinely dangerous contraband — literature here isn't decoration, it's the thing state re-education is specifically designed to purge. Pedagogical in showing how forbidden art still gets in, and still changes people, even under total surveillance.
Same pattern, different era
Different time, different place. The same thing keeps happening.
Blankets
Craig Thompson
The memoir that proved comics could break your heart.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Different Seasons
Stephen King
How fascism finds the boy next door.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Forever...
Judy Blume
The teen novel they banned for telling the truth.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Persepolis
Marjane Satrapi
Rebellion drawn in black ink.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Flip the lens
Same country. Now hear it from the other side.
For the family bookshelf
Same idea, written for a younger reader. Good for reading together.
The Toothpaste Millionaire
Jean Merrill
Toothpaste costs too much. He makes his own. Then sells it.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Lawn Boy
Jonathan Evison
He started a lawn business. The economy had other plans.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Flamer
Mike Curato
A gay Latino teen at camp. Banned for existing.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Drama
Raina Telgemeier
A graphic novel about theater, crushes, and who you are
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST