Funny In Farsi: A Memoir Of Growing Up Iranian In America by Firoozeh DumasMy rating: 3 of 5 stars A refreshing memoir by a talented, entertaining author who speaks in clear direct language and tells great stories, especially about her extended family. This valuable book illuminates the life of an immigrant and narrates the American […]
An Endearing and Instructive Immigration Story Told With Wit and Aplomb Read More »
I remember one sunny day in September, sitting on the corner of Dwight and Telegraph, strumming my guitar absent-mindedly—what song is this again?—my myopic eyes in constant scanning patterns, searching crowds, reminiscent of the night before, when I found and lost and found you again. Remember I gave you that American Beauty that my friend plucked
Uncrossing the Stars Read More »
From high in the passenger seat of a Peterbilt truck, the featureless expanse of the Great Plains stretched to the horizons. Beside me The Cisco Kid, a Canadian trucker, my ride, a lonely soul who spotted me hitchhiking in Sacramento, thumped the steering wheel, keeping time. It was March, and Cisco — I never learned
The Shiny Side Stayed Up Read More »
It’s a sunny afternoon in April 2004. Although I’ve consumed three doppios since rising at noon, I’m half-asleep when I grope for the telephone from behind three code-filled monitors — one buzzing with dangerous static. The phone’s chirped five times before I answer. “You sent a letter to my son.” It’s Jim, my oldest brother.
Garbled Dispatches Read More »
Security: When I was eight, Susan, a classmate, was kidnapped, raped, and murdered, and her severed fingers mailed home. I remember Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King getting shot. The Zodiac Killer haunted our region. The Vietnam War was raging. Horror was my childhood’s backdrop. My first friends: after moving to Sacramento in 1972, becoming
What’s Gone Is Gone. Next Please Read More »
How I Lost Some of My Life Once upon a time, I became a systems analyst for the now-defunct Banco Nacional. Dias, the R&D department manager, hired me, assigning me, the “resource”, to a gringo-hating division manager. They asked me to validate a network system to be installed in over 400 branches, a deal worth millions, the