Background "Funny in Farsi"

Window Half Sheet Handout

1. Glue the half sheet into your spiral with the window "open."

2. Write at least 15 prepositions relating to or connecting the window.

Let's review the vocabulary words from last week.

Try not to use your chart, but you may if you need to.

Pull out your vocabulary charts from Persepolis.

The words included Farsi, Tehran, and the Islamic Revolution.

"Funny in Farsi"

The debut book by Firoozeh Dumas (b. 1965), Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America has been described as a “warm, witty and sometimes poignant look at cross-cultural misunderstanding and family life” by Publishers Weekly. The often-confusing crossroads of culture and family is central to Funny in Farsi and other works by Dumas, who moved, along with her family, from Iran to California when she was seven years old. From welcoming the Shah in D.C. to her father’s dream to compete in a game show, the book chronicles the arc of her family’s story when they reach the American land where “one’s tan is a legitimate topic of conversation.” In this excerpt, Dumas writes of her—and her mother’s—first day attending Leffingwell Elementary School.