Laughing Without an Accent: Adventures of an Iranian American, at Home and Abroad
Dumas’ builds on her first memoir, Funny in Farsi (2003), offering more amusing tales from her life in this follow-up. Like her first outing, her latest is a collection of anecdotes from different points in her life: stories from her youth in Iran mix with memories of her experiences as a wife, mother, and author. Dumas’ parents remain a big influence in her life, whether she’s dealing with her mother’s frequent and sometimes, in the case of one bright red comforter, unsightly gifts, or trying to understand her father and his brothers’ fixation on The Price Is Right. In one of the funniest chapters, Dumas recalls the time she and her kids decided to try to sell a potato shaped like a cross on eBay, hoping to make a whopping sixty grand. There’s such warmth to Dumas’ writing that it invites the reader to pull up a seat at her table and smile right along with her at the quirks of her family and Iranians and Americans in general. --Kristine Huntley