Voice and Humor in It Ain’t So Awful, Falafel

Middle grade humor is a funny thing. It’s belly-laughs and puns. It can be self-deprecating and sometimes dark. It’s a way to grow the self. It’s a way to make sense of the universe, of gaps that yawn between family and friends, between the world of the home and the world beyond. One writer who juggles all of this with loving attention and spot-on voice is Firoozeh Dumas in her fictionalized memoir, It Ain’t So Awful, Falafel, with a smidgeon of irony contained even in the title.

“All my friends are in books.” This is the line that made my heart go out to young Zomorod because that was me, in my itinerant childhood and despite all the doomsayers who say kids aren’t reading like they used to do, I’ll bet there are kids in today’s world who are this way. Zomorod (she renames herself Cindy, a survival mechanism) has a voice that is funny, charming, poignant at times and always engaging.

By the time I get to this passage…

I guess I just don’t like people to meet my parents. I know that sounds bad. It’s not like I don’t love them. I just want to hide them until they stop being embarrassing.

…I adore this kid and will follow her anywhere.

The adults around her are equally engaging. Cindy-Zomorod’s father is a lovable eccentric in the manner of a Wodehousian earl, mildly daffy and definitely displaced. He tells his daughter that dogs and cats in America are luckier than most people in the world. (Yes, yes, we desi immigrants also used to tell each other things just like this.) Cindy, ex-Zomorod, navigates the trials of friendship with heart and her own inimitable flair.

In the process, I was delighted to find that she sets history straight—the history of Mossadegh and the Shah and of US meddling in Iran is seamlessly woven into this family’s narrative. Delivered in young Cindy’s wonderfully breezy voice, it rings with clear truths that few Americans are aware of.

Thank you, Firoozeh Dumas. Your book brings history, family, and one child’s story unerringly home.