Learn Persian with Chai and Conversation12 Apr 2023

Interview | Growing Up Irooni- Funny in Farsi 20 years later, with Firoozeh Dumas

I’m so excited to share with you today my interview with Firoozeh Dumas, author of Funny in Farsi. Funny in Farsi came out when I was in college, and it’s almost hard to remember what a huge huge deal it was at the time. Really, before that, we had zero mainstream representation of Iranians. The one thing we had that we could all point to was not without my daughter, and that was a horrifying depiction of what Iran and Iranians were. But then Firoozeh came out with her book, which is a delightful, funny, heartwarming memoir of what it’s like to grow up with an Iranian background in the USA. She touches on what it was like during the hostage crisis, and when Iranians were constantly negatively stereotyped in the media. But she also looked at the really lovely positive things that came from being an immigrant in this country. Iranians are often not allowed the levity of talking about their experiences in a way that say Greek people are in a movie like my big fat greek wedding. That movie was allowed to be funny and light and silly- and in a similar way, this book was the same, and really humanized Iranian Americans both for a western audience and for Iranians.It’s now been 20 years since the book came out, and so much has changed since then. It was such a delight and joy to be able to talk to Firoozeh about the context in which she wrote the book, and how things are different now. And what being Iranian meant to her then, what it means now.

Related Links:

Purchase the book Funny in Farsi
Follow Firoozeh on Instagram

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(223)

Poetry | Rumi's beshnō een nay Intro

In this lesson, we go over one of Rumi's most famous poems, beshnō een nay, which means ‘listen to the reed flute,' with our friend Muhammad Ali of Persian Poetics. We go over the essence and meaning ...

9 Jun 202147min

Interview | Growing Up Irooni- House of Pod's Kaveh Hoda on being Iranian-American in Medicine

Kaveh Hoda is a physician, musician and host of the medical podcast House of Pod in San Francisco. His expertise is in gastroenterology, hepatology and, according to him, making fun of medical grifter...

7 Apr 202125min

Interview | Growing Up Irooni- Persian Poetics, Growing Up in Detroit and Discovering the Love of Persian Poetry

My name is Leyla Shams, host of the Learn Persian with Chai and Conversation podcast. Today’s interview is with Mohammad Ali, better known as Persian poetics on both Instagram and twitter. He went vir...

24 Mar 202134min

Speak Lesson 71 | Nowruz (Vocabulary Sprint)

In this Persian (Farsi) lesson, we go over vocabulary associated with the most important Persian holiday, Nowruz. We'll learn about the haft seen table, and the items associated with the haft seen tab...

14 Mar 202117min

Poetry | Ahmad Shamlou's raz Part 3

In this lesson, we continue our study of Ahmad Shamlou's poem, Rāz. We learn the words and phrases in the second half of the poem.

8 Mar 202113min

Poetry | Ahmad Shamlou's raz Part 2

In this lesson, we go over the first half of Ahmad Shamlou's poem, Rāz.

24 Feb 202115min

Poetry | Ahmad Shamlou's raz Intro

In this lesson, we introduce the iconic Iranian poet Ahmad Shamlou, and talk about his poem ‘Raz’ or راز, meaning ‘the secret’. Shamlou was born in 1925 in Rasht, and he died in 2000, after a few year...

10 Feb 202134min

Interview | Growing Up Irooni- John Ghazvinian on America and Iran: A History, 1720 to the Present

John Ghazvinian joins us to talk about his new book, America and Iran: A History, 1720 to the Present, a comprehensive new survey of the bilateral relationship, based on years of archival research in ...

26 Jan 202124min