Analysis Of Firoozeh Dumas 'Funny In Farsi'

In Anh Do’s heartwarming and inspiring memoir The Happiest Refugee, the author elicits the prosperous adventure of a migrant family that come across various personal and memorable experiences. The central theme of a migrant family is established through their successful journey to Australia. Anh Do portrays this theme through the life lessons he learns from his parents, furthermore he is given a variety of opportunities where he could earn money and contribute to the family’s income. His academic endeavors at school is depicted through his lucrative career as a comedian and an university student.

The focus of this paper is an analysis of the book Funny in Farsi by Firoozeh Dumas using concepts from the Lives Across Cultures textbook. Ten concepts are identified and defined from Chapter readings. Following definitions, examples from the novel of these concepts are shown.

War is portrayed as something emotional that every living being goes through in their lifetime. Most of the people experience.

Dumas spent her life in Iran and moved up to America. ‘’My life became one long-running Oprah show’’(Dumas 89). American’s minds were tabulea rasae when they look at Irans. Most Americans in 1972 never heard of Iran before. Dumas tried to educate them about it and all that was in it. She described what caviar is and fish eggs and what they did with those too (Dumas 90).She described how different it is living up there than in America and what different cultures there are. Dumas explained the education and what’s required along with the way Iran shares a border with Turkey.

struggles with self identity after moving from Iran to America for asylum. In addition to fleeing Iran due to the political climate and his family’s involvement with the Shah, Behrani is presented to the reader as the quintessential immigrant and refugee. He and his family move to San Francisco, California in order to start a new life. With very little money compared to what they were accustomed to, Behrani and his family reside in a relatively wealthy area.

All people are diverse and come from many backgrounds. Most people settled here in America as an immigrant to start a better life for their future generations and for opportunities. Most people came here with nothing but bringing along their cultures, knowledge, beliefs and behaviors which they can be shared amongst others in groups and society. In society, starting with the earlier generation there was always shared culture of classes, although everyone portrays immigrants as the lowest status. They are always disliked particularly for coming here as an immigrant, even though most of their backgrounds or their parent’s background statuses were very much similar whether they want to admit it or not. It’s how they hold themselves in society. People are divided into different classes and treated differently. Most immigrants have to settle in, adapting to the American lifestyle, whether they like it or not, they’ll have to blend in and start off with low paying jobs and making new friends. Adapting to lifestyle, the choice of food and to how they communicate. It is always harder for immigrants to unite with everyone since people are so strict against immigrants; they judge them as outcasts by what they eat, what they wear and especially how one communicates. High culture/elites think they are higher ranking so therefore there is always miscommunication. They think they are way better and wouldn’t want except one another because of status or flaws.

Negative stereotypes have simultaneously been flared around as a form of hate, and at times displayed through media. It is not fair to those immigrants that suffer getting deported after years of settling down here with their families. Imagine a family that had everything they wanted already with them. A house, jobs, food, and the struggle they went through to get it all, why should they leave? This country of ours has been classified as “The Melting Pot” and the term is still in full force used today. The United States has always been known for Diverse cultures merging together to make this country the very way it is

Because of his appearance, she judged him to be gang members. Prejudice was also visible in the owner of the gun store. She judged the Persian man to be a terrorist .because of the way he looked, and because they spoke in foreign to him the language. Prejudice also played a role in the behavior of vandals who painted racial graffiti insulting Arabs on the Persian man's

It is debatable that most people of western societies especially here in the U.S share a common perspective about the country of Iran having a reputation for terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism. In the media today, Iran is accused of having nuclear weapons and various politicians have made references to its contribution to the constant violence in Iraq. The information that we absorb everyday from news reports adds to our biases and enhances our negative opinions of Iran as a country. Through the help of the media, people of our culture stereotype the Iranians based on an ethnocentric viewpoint without developing a clear sense of understanding or the reasons behind their beliefs. In the graphic novel Persepolis, the

In order for the Muslim immigrant population to become fully integrated into French society, they must not be isolated and treated negatively as they are now. Encouragement from French society and its citizens as well as resources that can help immigrants learn more about the French language and culture are fundamental parts of integration. By providing resources for Muslim immigrants to become familiar with the French language and France’s culture, they will become more likely to consider themselves integrated French citizens. While Muslim immigrants should be encouraged to embrace French culture and society, they should not be pushed to abandon their ideals and beliefs of their home countries if they wish to keep them. France has negatively

Although, it was interesting to see the similarities between French history and American history. Both histories seem to initially revolve around ideas of ethnocentricity and xenophobia. Despite the fact that the United States of America is often considered a melting pot of different cultures, there do seem to be similar themes throughout history where the idea of the "ideal" American citizen seemed to prevail and other culture groups had been expected to fall in line with those

One of the first steps in cross cultural communication is making sure that you are confident in your own cultural identity. In the book that I chose, Lipstick Jihad by Azadeh Moaveni, the author struggled with finding a place that she felt she belonged and her cultural identity. Azadeh Moaveni is of Iranian diaspora and was born and raised in Palo Alto, California. Growing up Azadeh was embarrassed by being associated with Iran so she thought of herself as a Persian princess and when people asked “ Where are you from?” she would tell them that she was Persian. Throughout her childhood and especially during the adolescent years , once Moaveni started to accept her Iranian culture she started to dream about living in Iran and she believed that if she was from Iran then that meant she belonged there and it was her home and after she graduated from college she moved there to be a Journalist.

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood is a graphic novel written and designed by Marjane Satrapi, a native of Iran, which outlines her youth and interpretation of the country before, during, and after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Many topics are conveyed within the comic, some being the root of controversy concerning Iran as an Orient from a western perspective. These topics include the history of Iran and politics, Islam from an ideological perspective, the oppression of women with the hijab, gender roles in Iranian society, and social classes among Iranians. In order to obtain a general overview of how these changes affected Iranian society, one must understand a brief historical context of Iran, from the rise and fall of the Pahlavi dynasty starting in 1925 and ending in 1979, to post revolution efforts; the distinction between Islam and Islamic Fundamentalism; and the basic underlining of specific gender roles established from Iranian patriarchy. Persepolis provides a contextual way to visualize and understand how Iran has been affected socially, politically, and economically from the viewpoint of young Marjane.

I believe ARGO attempts to not go down that path by providing a historical context within the first few minutes of the movie. Providing historical context in the opening sequence of a film is a tool many filmmakers use to fool their audience into thinking that what they are about to watch is an accurate depiction of reality. This initial presentation of “facts” causes the audience to believe the depictions of race, culture, and events presented in the movie. ARGO, for instance, portrays Iranians as anti-American, angry and violent. Do anti-American, angry, and violent Iranians exist? Of course they do, but they are not a fair depiction of Iranian’s as a whole. There is a distinction between the government and the people, and between the militants who took the American’s hostage and ordinary Iranians, but that distinction is blurred in ARGO. Throughout the film, there are crowds of violent Iranians setting flags on fire and fuming in anger. We see a civilian be killed by Iranian soldiers and we see a woman screaming at the airport while going through security. None of these acts are supported by any other information; it is just pure terror everywhere you look. What does this lead someone who knows nothing about Iran to think? That that’s what everyday life is like in Iran, and that Iranians are violent and oppressive

values of solidarity and tolerance towards immigration, as proved by the deliberate media overrepresentation of a number of recurrent tropes.