NPR Commentaries and Interviews
June 21, 2008
Writer Firoozeh Dumas talks with Scott Simon about her new memoir, Laughing Without an Accent. It’s a collection of humorous essays about her life as the daughter of Iranian immigrants, and about some the colorful characters in her extended family.
Commentary: ‘Laughing Without an Accent’
November 3, 2007
Iranian-American Firoozeh Dumas was a teenager living in Southern California at the time when the Iranian revolution happened, and the hostage crisis changed her life.
A few weeks ago, she met one of the former hostages. Kathryn Koob had been a cultural officer at the United States Embassy in Tehran.
Commentary: A Personal Look Back at the Iranian Hostage Crisis
April 20, 2004
Iran does not abide by international copyright laws, which means that foreign books get translated and sold without permission from, or payment to, authors. Commentator Firoozeh Dumas heard that there were 19 versions of the latest Harry Potter book on the Iranian market. She didn’t want her own book to be translated badly, so she hired her own translator.
March 29, 2004
Nearly 2 million people were laid off in 2003, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. One of them was the husband of commentator Firoozeh Dumas.
December 25, 2003
Commentator Firoozeh Dumas moved to Southern California from Iran in 1972. Her family didn’t celebrate Christmas, but they watched the Bob Hope Christmas special on TV every year. Her parents always laughed with the laugh track at the jokes — and then asked her to translate them. She got them all, except the golf jokes.
Commentary: Immigrant Christmas
March 10, 2003
In Morning Edition’s ongoing series of commentaries on the subject of possible military action against Iraq, commentator Firoozeh Dumas says France’s opposition to U.S. military action in Iraq is for the first time making her, an Iranian woman, more popular among her American friends than her French husband.
