Ratings11
Average rating3.8
Hilarious, to sum it up in one word.
As someone who's lived in Iran, I could relate to her Iranian references and her struggles of growing up Iranian in America.
Would recommend, if you want a light and funny read!
Abandoned, p.82. It's not funny. I can forgive that. It's not kind—and that, I can't. The essays so far have all consisted of her poking mean-spirited fun at: Americans, for not knowing much about Iran; Americans, for not wanting to learn about her culture; Americans, for wanting to learn about her culture, because those are just wannabe hipsters; her husband, for not mind-reading her precise fantasy honeymoon; and mostly her mother and father, over and over, for not learning English well enough, for not adapting “the right way” to U.S. culture, for being goofy yokels. It's like a surly thirteen-year-old: everything and everyone sucks.
It was a nice read with some good laughs along.
Since I am an Iranian, I couldn't resist relating with characters and feeling so close to situations.
We had to read this book for school and while it wasn't terrible, it is definitely not something I would have picked out on my own.
Luckily I did find it humorous, otherwise it was have been absolutely awful to try and trudge through. There was even humor in some parts where it was quite tragic, so you kind of just sat there with a cringy smile on your face.
With all that said, there wasn't anything particularly memorable about this book for me. I'm not much of a memoir kind of person, and I only really felt like I truly connected with two characters in the novel, Firoozeh and Kazem. I also couldn't relate to a lot of the things in the book since I'm practically your definition of a basic white girl.
It's a nice book to attain more cultural knowledge, but beyond that it was just your regular old humorous memoir about some random person's life.