Firoozeh Dumas: Her Funny Book, Funny in Farsi, Made Her an Enemy of the State in Iran

Firoozeh Dumas is a very funny Iranian. Check that! She is a very funny American who happens to be an Iranian immigrant. Her book, Funny is Farsi, is a story -- rather a series of stories -- about growing up as an immigrant. But it is about more than that. It is a book about growing up -- as an immigrant; as an Iranian; as the target of hate (following the hostage situation in Tehran in 1979); and as a kid who didn’t fit in. Mostly it is a bunch of stories by a humanitarian. But not some preachy spiel; these are funny stories. She’s also spreading the message on the lecture circuit. The message preaches tolerance. Correct that! It is a collection of stories that point to the importance of tolerance.

Ms Dumas came to Fairfax, VA to speak with social studies teachers about her book, but also with a message about how to view other cultures. She mentioned a possible homework assignment: have students watch the news for a week, and then come to general conclusions about the United States based on the news stories. They will find, she said, that the conclusions will be pretty darn depressing. Now, we live here. We can counterbalance the news with our own experiences. But when there is news of the Middle East, it is all negative, and most of us do not have that experience to provide ballast. And so the stereotype of the Middle East does not include lightheartedness, humor, fun, and playfulness.

Ms Dumas told of a woman who was surprised to learn that Iranian parents hold birthday parties for their kids -- just like Americans! Even at McDonalds!

In marketing her book, Ms Dumas was told by literary agents that Americans would not buy a funny book about Middle Easterners. People wanted the stereotype -- the terrorists, the oppressed, the brutalized and the torturers. Not birthday parties. But her book was published, and a funny thing happened: it became a best seller in the U.S., and a very popular book in Iran. The gatekeepers of American books by and large called it wrongly when it came to what Americans wanted. And stereotypes took another hit in Iran. The people (who, contrary to popular belief in this country, tend to like Americans) ate up the book. The radical Shi’ite government -- not so much. She cannot go back to the country of her birth because the government does not share the people’s sense of humor.

The message to educators was about news bias, but also about taking care not to insert preconceptions about kids based on cultural stereotypes.

A note about educators: Maybe because in any situation where someone is at the front of the room talking, that someone is usually the teacher, when we are not up there, we don’t know how to act. Just as teachers typically make awful students (in classes full of teachers, we tend to do all of those annoying things that we won’t let our students do, from the audible yawns to texting in class to talking too loudly), they also tend to be rude audiences. In the midst of Ms Dumas’ wonderful talk, there were teachers on their Blackberries, teachers looking at their watches, teachers holding little meetings. During the question-and-answer session, one woman gave a speech, as if to say, "You are but an internationally acclaimed author and award-winning speaker, but now you have had credibility conferred upon you by an eighth grade civics teacher. You are so blessed!"

Ms Dumas spoke of the need for tolerance and diversity, and told of the nastiness she saw when some people reacted to the Iranian hostage situation in 1979. But fully embedded were glowing testaments to the American system. She spoke in almost spiritual terms about the idea of a library, a place filled with books that one may borrow. In Iran, no library…no books! Human rights for Ms Dumas are not something to be taken lightly; when she talks to people in Iran, they long to be free to read, to write, to dress, to Cerf the Web as they see fit.

Funny in Farsi is about funny things that happen to a family. It is also a book that takes tolerance, diversity, inclusion, cultural understanding, our shared humanity, all the things that people have in common seriously. When she addresses groups, she does the same in a very engaging way.

Growing Together -- More Choices, More Cultural Homogeneity

We may not see how the choices we have in today’s world reflect how homogenous our society is becoming, noisy town hall meetings notwithstanding. But a recent moment in the White House found a country music star singing a song to the nation’s first black president -- a song inspired by and about him; a song with Civil Rights referenced; a song extolling the global world. It was more than a moment; it was a signature moment. When Brad Paisley sang his hit Welcome to the Future to President Obama the moment underscored two key notions: choice and homogeneity. We have choices that cross cultural boundaries, and these choices are bringing us closer and closer together.

Young people who’ve grown up on the Internet, "music sharing," cable TV, and Facebook take these for granted. But it is a quantum leap in communications from a generation ago. Truly there are significant problems with these technologies, but they provide people today with an incredible gift: choice.

A generation ago, news was owned by three main networks (and perhaps a single local station). Information was hard copy -- one had to dig up information in books, magazines and reports. The EM spectrum was a carefully controlled and monitored as a vital asset in the Cold War. But today information flows freely.

Last week I was driving across country. Whenever we needed directions (GPS, one a security priority, can now be utilized with your phone), opinions about restaurants, or tickets to some event, we could use a phone, from the car, for instant results. What is available online today is astounding.

When it comes to music, the technology makes the choices endless. At your fingertips you have current music and past music, local music and world music, urban music and country music -- along with reviews of songs, and the means to make your own music.

Yet with this wonderful portal of music choice, with its possibilities for using music to better understand people from all over the world, some people still use music to divide. "This is OUR music, and if you are one of us, it is YOURS too." And "If you like another style of music, you are not one of us." It’s music-as-a-weapon.

It is like bigotry. The generation with the greatest access and closeness to people different from themselves, the most diverse generation in history, seems to be the one using the language of intolerance and prejudice.

People should realize that as a society we are becoming more and more homogenous. In today’s world, nowhere is unaffected by the rest of the world. In the excellent Heard Museum in Phoenix, AZ, a showcase of Native American culture, there is a film about the Havasupai of the Verde River canyons. They chose to be isolated in the beautiful canyons, and yet they spoke English, wore jeans and t-shirts with rock band logos, and rode Toyota four-wheelers.

The people of this nation have been pulled together by three main forces: service in the military, education, and the Internet. The military was the first great integrating force. Not without problems, it nonetheless brought people of varying backgrounds into a merit-based system. The nation’s education system today teaches tolerance. Ninety-one percent of the nation’s children go to public schools like Edison High School in Northern Virginia. It is a high-performing International Baccalaureate school with a minority white population. Elite private schools, once lily-white, show a different, more diverse, more integrated face today. The newest trend is online education, where you can take classes in which you communicate with people all over the world in your "virtual classes."

This leads to the culturally-unifying force of the Internet. You wish to buy authentic Navajo jewelry from the Navajos themselves? You used to have to go to Arizona; now you can go online. I once tried to buy a product made in a city I was visiting. The woman at the counter told me I would be better off ordering on the Internet! Improbably, the language of the Internet is now known everywhere. It is a cultural commonality, in a homogenous world.

Today we have more choices than ever before, in a world brought together by these choices.

Solving Our Problems: Let’s Go "Multi"

Perhaps you’ve heard the old joke that goes: There are two types of people in the world, those who divide people into two types and those that don’t. One of the smartest people ever, Steven J. Gould, wrote about people’s disturbing characteristic of dividing things into two’s. That makes it easier to say that someone is for us or against us. This dualism adds to our dueling.

It also prevents us from seeing solutions to our problems. In local school districts, it’s either whole language or phonics (in reality, just about any reading program has both). In politics it’s liberal versus conservative. In Washington, DC politics, it’s black versus white. In the Bible belt, one finds Christians versus anyone who isn’t.

The radio bands are cleanly divided into liberal and conservative camps, and ratings depend on one side demonizing the other. The country isn’t served by this. When pressed on his liberal credentials, then-President Clinton said, "That dog won’t hunt anymore." Like him or hate him, his effort to blur the distinction might have merit.

Around the Internet there is a campaign to paint the world as a coming battleground. The Muslims are coming and coming fast! Soon they will take over Europe, then "Islamify" the US. Then won’t Christians who ignored all the signs be sorry!

In matters of race, we have issues, but we show progress. The quiet progress comes from interracial marriages and mixed race neighborhoods. Moreover, it comes from mixed race people. Tiger Woods signaled, by his notoriety, a change in our concept of race. Black/white distinctions are being blurred by the idea of multi-racial.

Our true selves as Americans show up not as blots of black, white and other, but as a mix. If Tiger by virtue of his parentage is cool, having a mixed-race president is way cool.

Religious distinctions, products of our minds and not physical characteristics, should be easily bridgeable. But we insist on exclusivity. Maybe it’s time for "make it cool" to be multi-religious. Mike Mansfield in his book The Japanese Mind describes how the Japanese can, with no internal contradictions and no social discomfort, be of several beliefs. They may be Christian, Buddhist, and Shinto at the same time, choosing rituals from each, as they deem fit.

And why not? Why can’t I choose a theology drawing on the Wisdom of Solomon and David, the meditative awareness of the Buddha, the poetry of the Quran, and the humility of Jesus? Religion at its best creates community, and our diverse society is rich in the wisdom of the ages.

Yet we feel we must choose one and only one.

I know someone whose wife is a Muslim Moroccan who followed her white, Christian husband to the U.S. from Spain. She believes in celebrating everyone’s holidays. She enjoys St Patrick’s Day with the relish of the Irish, Christmas with the sense of joy experienced by Christians, and Eid with the reverence of her own faith.

But that we all could embrace such an outlook. But we seem stuck in our dualist nature. Pro-Con. Go-No-Go. We argue to argue. We can, however, be more than the residue of our little philosophical encampments.

I admit there are limitations. One cannot, for example, be both a Red Sox and Yankee fan. That would be silly.