Funny in 

Farsi

Pratap Shrestha

Final Project

ELL 3

Immigrant has to struggle everyday to make their lives better. Being in a different

country difficult already, then once they came here their plans will be change because what

they want will not happen. They will find it difficult to catch up with the different country

culture, rule, and regulations. They will think that it will be easy for them to do something

simple like talking different language. If they do not know the language it would make it

more difficult. It will take time to learn anything that they don’t know.

Funny in Farsi is a book which explains the story about an immigrant American-

Iranian girl and her family.  The Struggle of life being in the different country, where you

don’t know anyone except your family. The book tells us about the cultures of Iranians,

growing up in an Iranian household, moving to America and being with different people.

Firoozeh was the Iranian girl. She moved to southern California at the age of seven.

She came to United States with her father who believed America was the rich country and

there are lots of possibilities. That’s what my parents thought and they brought me here. It is

true there are lots of possibilities to be a person that you want to be in this country. If we

work hard the dream we have can be true.

Firoozeh first day at school with her mom, who doesn’t speak English at all. Their

trouble of not knowing English made them hard to communicate. That must be an

embarrassing movement and painful for them in front of the people .It is hard to go in

different country, if you don’t know the language. Language is the main thing which will

help to move on. If I didn’t know English language, I don’t think I would be this far now.
 Firoozeh dad who had came one year earlier, so he was better in English language. He

had to bring his family, so he worked hard and he brought them in America .He was the

strongest person, always had good memories about America for his children and he was

engineer. I think every parent think about their children first and they want their children to

be always happy.

Growing up in different culture can change a person, being with different culture

friends. Firoozeh herself, she changed her name to Julie. Which wasn’t a good thing to do in

her culture, but she did. Again the second culture shock, she married with a French man. She

met him in college, they liked each other. In their culture they were not allowed to marry but

nothing stopped them.

Growing up in two different culture isn’t easy and it wasn’t for Firoozeh too. She had

to face different problems which were all because of different culture. Her mother-in-law

hated her, but good thing was her parents supported her even though it was against the

culture. There was a great family relationship between them, which was going to break into

pieces because of two different cultures.

There are lots of differences between two different cultures and traditions. In

American tradition, Thanksgiving Day eating turkey meat on that day and family gets

together. This day is one of the big holidays for American, but like for the people

from Iran they don’t have this holiday. They have similar way to celebrate like getting

together with family and friends. Most of the holidays are to get together. We don’t see every

relative and friends every day and that’s the day we meet each other.

This is a memorable story of a person life and the power of family love. This book

tells us that we need to show the way we are the qualities we have as a human being. There

are different kinds of people in this place. They are showing their traditions, language, and

culture to other people. It’s like a bowl of salad because there are many different people from
all over the world in this country. They have different way of living and thinking. It doesn’t

matter where we came from and how different we are in front of people around us. We all are

human beings.