It Ain't So Awful, Falafel
By Firoozeh Dumas
Being an Iranian in late 1970s Newport Beach, CA, was no easy task for middle-schooler Zomorod Yousefzadeh. And then the Iranian Revolution hit. That's pretty much the plot of this YA novel. The summer before her 7th-grade year, Zomorod move to this well-to-do enclave, and all she wants to do is to fit in. She even adopts the name Cindy, hoping this nod to Americaness will endear her to her classmates. It works, kind of. But when Iranian revolutionaries take Americans hostage, there is not much "Cindy" can do. Her father loses his job, and the family is on the brink of having to move back to a homeland that, from what they have seen on tv, looks like a foreign country.
The highlight of this book is Cindy's first-person narration. She feels real -- likely because the book is a loosely fictionalized account of the author's own life. The story is quite funny and a quick read. It would be funnier if the anti-Middle Eastern sentiment expressed then didn't resonate so loudly today.
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