The Immigrant as Stereotype: Funny in Farsi

Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing up Iranian in America by Firoozeh Dumas

Funny in Farsi is a collection of essays that offers an intimate, but humorous, look into the Iranian immigrant experience. It begins with Firoozeh's move with her family from Iran to California in 1972 and their experience, over several decades, navigating what it means to be a foreigner in a foreign land.

Many aspects of the memoir are light-hearted; Firoozeh tries to make sense of peculiar aspects of American culture and tradition - such as hot dogs, Thanksgiving turkey, and TV comedy specials - and shares her amusement with the difficulty Americans have in pronouncing her ethnic name. However, it also exposes some of the downtrodden realities faced by Iranians in America at the time of the 1979 Revolution and the American hostage crisis; Firoozeh's father gets laid off from work and can't find a job, and her family - as well as swatches of Iranians across the country - are unfairly villainized for the actions of a few extremists back home.

Firoozeh's personal experiences as an immigrant in America speak to the universal experience of being an outsider, and feelings of alienation or disbelonging are ones that almost all students will be able to relate to. In this way, the memoir provides an opportunity for students to surface leverage points of connection between their lives and that of Firoozeh and her family. To this end, Firoozeh must contend with the messages put forth about Iran by Western media; the incongruence between the values of her family and the anti-democratic beliefs that Americans attribute to them, and all of Iranians, invites students to think about the role the media plays in perpetuating oversimplified generalizations and stereotypes.

Essential Questions

To what extent does seeing "our" world from the perspective of an "outsider" enable us to better empathize with others and understand the limitations of our point of view?
What role does the media play in "Othering" groups of people and formulating biases?
What is the relationship between stereotyping and nationalism?

Enduring Understandings

Students will reflect on both the "single stories" in their own lives and those that afflict Dumas' life to understand how various social dimensions--such as culture, race, and nationality--shape people's beliefs and practices.
Students will be able to use Edward Said's Orientalism to examine how Western media promotes one-dimensional understandings of Eastern communities by playing on existing caricatures or stereotypes.
Students will be able to analyze the extent to which loyalty to one's country prevents people from building an understanding of others who are not like them.

Resources for Teachers

The Danger of a Single Story

To further explore the role that stereotypes play on how people see themselves and others, students can watch Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Ted Talk, where she reflects on how only having access to British literature as a child prevented her from seeing the value in her African culture.

In Funny in Farsi, Firoozeh writes about the impact that stereotypes had on how Americans treated her family. At one point, her father considers "what a waste" it is to "hate an entire population simply because of the actions of a few."

When people are exposed to stories that prioritize a particular perspective, then that becomes the only story they know. Single stories are what breed stereotypes and prejudice, and they can only be combatted with the addition of new perspectives.

funny-in-farsi-book.pdf

Funny in Farsi Text:

To support students who may not have access to a physical copy of the book or for use in classrooms that work predominantly with technology, a full-length digital version of the memoir is provided.

For general discussion questions, click here.

For chapter-by-chapter discussion questions, click here.

For teaching guides created by Penguin Random House, click here and here.

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