Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

Seriously, folks. Firoozeh Dumas’ It Ain’t So Awful, Falafel was SO good. Funny, poignant, painful, and heartwarming, Dumas’ semi-autobiographical middle grade novel is a portrait of what it was like to be Iranian in America in the late 1970s and early 1980s, during the Iran hostage crisis. (Also the rise of Khomeini–think Billy Joel singing “Ayatollah’s in Iran”.) Cindy–formerly known as Zomorod Yousefzadeh–has just moved from Compton to Newport Beach with her family and is set to reinvent herself with a Brady Bunch name. Between translating for her depressed mother, unenthusiastic participation in taarof, and starting at Lincoln Junior High, Cindy has a full plate; luckily, she manages to make some solid friends before the Iranian revolution, the hostage crisis, and the deterioration of US relations with Iran. The resultant anti-Iranian sentiment, however, threatens her family’s residence in America–but how can she return to a country that has stopped allowing women and girls to dress how they choose and become what they want to be?

How, indeed. Cindy’s situation is frighteningly NOT farfetched, and yet Dumas manages to balance the seriousness of it with her comedic approach to everyday details. I laughed out loud, I shuddered–I just about cried–and I googled the hostage crisis (which googling left me angry with my own country). We need ALL THE BOOKS that chronicle the immigrant experience in America, not to mention the complexity of lives lived between two worlds; It Ain’t So Awful, Falafel is a perfectly lovely example of both.

I’m pretty sure my 12-year-old is getting it for Christmas this year.