
Laughing Without an Accent
Adventures of an Iranian American, at Home and Abroad
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Narrated by:
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Firoozeh Dumas
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By:
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Firoozeh Dumas
About this listen
With dry wit and a bold spirit, Dumas puts her own unique mark on the themes of family, community, and tradition. She braves the uncommon palate of her French-born husband and learns the nuances of having her book translated for Persian audiences. (The censors edit out all references to ham.) And along the way, she reconciles her beloved Iranian customs with her Western ideals.
Explaining crossover cultural food fare, Dumas says, "The weirdest American culinary marriage is yams with melted marshmallows. I don't know who thought of this Thanksgiving tradition, but I'm guessing a hyperactive, toothless three-year-old." On Iranian wedding anniversaries: "It just initially seemed odd to celebrate the day that 'our families decided we should marry even though I had never met you, and frankly, it's not working out so well.'" On trying to fit in with her American peers: "At the time, my father drove a Buick LeSabre, a fancy French word meaning 'OPEC thanks you.'"
Dumas also documents her first year as a new mother, the familial chaos that ensues after she removes the television set from the house, the experience of taking 51 family members on a birthday cruise to Alaska, and a road trip to Iowa with an American once held hostage in Iran.
Droll, moving, and relevant, Laughing Without an Accent shows how our differences can unite us - and provides indelible proof that Firoozeh Dumas is a humorist of the highest order.
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Editorial reviews
This bouncy follow-up to Funny in Farsi has too much heart to be shrugged off as froth. Humorist Firoozeh Dumas resists playing gimmicky Western misperceptions of Islamic culture for gags. Instead, in Laughing Without an Accent, she affectionately chronicles a childhood in Iran, teenage years in Southern California, marriage to a French man, and her doting, nutty Persian family's diligent attempts to adapt to life in "Amrika". "The velour navy jogging suit is my male relatives' default attire," Dumas notes. "After all of them had acquired second and, in some cases, third pairs, they started getting catty."
Teasing out the absurdity underlying ordinary situations is the introspective Dumas' cup of tea, particularly when she reinvents her parents' quirks as universal comic zingers, rather than progress reports on their cultural assimilation. When her father turns eighty, 51 relatives cram aboard an Alaskan cruise ship, where they're tailed by the crew's pricey shutterbug. "My father...kept interrogating relatives about the number of photos they had purchased," observes Dumas. "Then converting that to Iranian currency and letting them know what that money would have purchased in prerevolutionary Iran."
Laughing Without an Accent is, I'm sure, wry and lively in its written form. But as narrated by Firoozeh Dumas a 2005 Audie Award finalist in her creamy-textured, toasted licorice voice, it upgrades to an indelible personal account. Dumas uses even pacing, few pauses, and a soothing, chatty tone to build intimacy. Her warm honeysuckle inflections groove with character-specific dialogue and she's most animated when narrating sections in Farsi, her lyrical native tongue, or imitating her mother's charmingly accented English. ("Vat? Eez very good.") She is such splendid company that when Dumas reflects "this feeling of being on the outside has shaped me into the perfect party guest", it seems even she must know she eez better than just very good. Nita Rao
Critic reviews
"These stories, like everything Firoozeh Dumas writes, are charming, highly amusing vignettes of family life. Dumas is one of those rare people - a naturally gifted storyteller." (Alexander McCall Smith)
So much fun!
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Laughing Without an Accent
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Because it's just a collection of stories with no particular linkage between one and the other, there are some strange jumps where you don't know what happened to cause the change (e.g. she did not used to drink alcohol, but then she was drinking it; we don't know how she married her husband, even though we know about how they first met... things like that! But it's not meant to be a fully-fledged memoir, I guess)
I had not read the author's previous book - but I am looking forward to that now!
hilarous and insightful
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Cute, pleasant
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She is so funny
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A listening pleasure
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Firoozeh Dumas has done it again!
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Another wonderful insight into a Persian family
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would have been higher if not for the narration
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If you could sum up Laughing Without an Accent in three words, what would they be?
I LISTENED TO ALL THREE OF DUMAS' BOOKS IN A ROW AND LOVED THEM ALLWhat does Firoozeh Dumas bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
HAVING THE AUTHOR READ THE BOOK WITH HER HUMOR AND LANGUAGE ABILITIES HELPED MAKE IT SPECIAL.Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
YES.Any additional comments?
I WOULD HAVE ENJOYED HAVING ALL THREE OF DUMAS' BOOK BE IN ONE OR TWO VOLUMES. SCHOOL YEARS COULD BE ONE AND THEN ADULT YEARS BE A SEPARATE BOOK. EACH OF THE THREE BOOKS WAS A JUMBLE OF ALL AGES.BUT I LOVED HER STORIES AND WAS LIVING IN LOS ANGELES AT THE TIMES SHE WAS TALKING ABOUT AND COULD RELATE TO HER STORY.
LEFT WANTING MORE
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