Letter To Firoozeh Dumas Essay

When people think of the F word, they tend to think of a certain four letter. To Firoozeh Dumas, the F word means years of discrimination. After living in America for 29 years, Dumas decided to write stories for her children about her life growing up Iranian in America. These stories were later published as Funny in Farsi: A Memoir Growing Up Iranian in America. At age nine Dumas moved from Iran to permanently live in America where she and her family were harassed for their difficult to pronounce names. Fed up with the harassment, Dumas decided to change her first name to a more American name in middle school. However, as she entered college, Dumas decided her appreciation for her own culture was more important than if her peers can say her name properly so she started to go by Firoozeh again.

Dumas approaches the dark topic of bullying, because of cultural differences, with light humor. She argues that Americans should expanding their cultural awareness by providing stories on how bullying

“My cousin’s name, Farbod, means “Greatness.” When he moved to America, all the kids called him “Farthead”(Dumas). This immediately grabs the reader’s attention and holds it as Dumas continues on saying how she never imagined her name would be “such an obstacle” when her family moved from Iran to America. She was shocked at the cruelty that Americans were subjecting her to all because of her name. The abuse shaped her opinion not only on her new home but America in general. Firoozeh Dumas had never stepped foot in America so Whittier, California became her perspective window on how all Americans acted. Judging by the brutal abuse she was subject to, Dumas most likely had a negative view towards all of Americans. If the Americans she came in contact with had been accepting of her culture, Dumas would not have had to change a piece of her identity to fit