Learn Persian with Chaiang Conversation.

I'm so excited to share with you today my interview with Fyuzzi Dumas, author of Fonny and Farsi.

Funny and 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 representations of

Iranian Americans. 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 Fiduza 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 U.S. She touches on what it was like during the hostage crisis when

Iranians were constantly negatively stereotyped in the media,

but she also looks 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 is the same, and really humanized Iranian Americans,

both for a Western audience and for Iranians.

Anyhow, it's now 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 Fyuzze about the context in which he wrote the book and how things are different now. And what being Iranian meant to her then, what it means now. And I really enjoyed this interview and hope you will as well. And without any further ado, here's Fiduze Dumas. Thank you so much for talking with me today. Well, thank you for inviting me, Leila.

This is the 20th anniversary of your book, Funny and Farsi. And I want to say a little bit about my

experience with this book. So I was in college at the time. I started college in 2001. So this book came out

and, you know, I go to school or I went to school at the University of Texas. So we have a big,

you know, Middle East program here. So I took some classes in the Persian language and stuff.

And when this book came out, it was a huge, huge deal for us all. It was the first book that, you know,

was a mainstream breakthrough book about the Persian language.

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