On April 13th, the UCI Libraries Speaker Series will host Firoozeh Dumas, author of Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America, in a special program on “The Immigrant Experience: Bridging Two Worlds. The event will feature UCI Professor of Sociology Rubén Rumbaut in a conversation with the author about her unique personal story within the larger context of the American immigrant experience. Book signing and refreshments will follow.

Funny in Farsi chronicles the American journey of Dumas’ wonderfully engaging family, who immigrated from Iran to Southern California when the author was seven, eventually landing in Newport Beach. Dumas began writing in January 2001 with no prior writing experience except for the Humanities papers she had written at UC Berkeley. Her stories were picked up by Random House and published in 2003. They received universal rave reviews from readers, critics, and Nobel Peace Prize Winner and former President, Jimmy Carter. Dumas hopes that her humor will serve as a bridge, letting people see that the only enemy we have is ignorance. She and her French husband, Francois, live in Northern California with their two children.

Professor Rubén Rumbaut is Co-Director of the Center for Research on Immigration, Population and Public Policy at UCI. He is an internationally-known scholar of the adaptation of immigrants and refugees in the U.S., and the author of numerous books, including the critically acclaimed Immigrant America: A Portrait, and the more recently published companion books: Ethnicities: Children of Immigrants in America, and Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation.

Firoozeh Dumas

The event is being held in conjunction with the “Orange County Reads One Book” project which invites everyone in Orange County to read Funny in Farsi and celebrate with special discussions and programs in Spring 2004. For further information on this exciting project please go to: ­www.orangecountyreads.org.

Copies of Funny in Farsi and Professor Rumbaut’s books will be available for purchase and signing by the authors. The event is free and open to the public. Please call (949) ­­824-4651 for further information.