Why read It Ain't So Awful, Falafel?

Book cover of It Ain't So Awful, Falafel

Book description

Zomorod (Cindy) Yousefzadeh is the new kid on the block . . . for the fourth time. California's Newport Beach is her family's latest perch, and she's determined to shuck her brainy loner persona and start afresh with a new Brady Bunch name-Cindy. It's the late 1970s, and fitting in…

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Why read it?

1 author picked It Ain't So Awful, Falafel as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Shanah Khubiar

Author

Firoozeh Dumas’ humor is so natural that it’s effortless on the page. Many immigrant stories are so dark as to simply become glorified moralizing, but here is a genuinely interesting and fun story that teaches a lesson without being so heavy-handed that it’s little more than a treatise.

I identified with Zomorod’s (“Cindy’s”) new kid on the block in California experience. Likewise, I was a nerd who had to move often, so it wasn’t always easy to make new friends, especially when it was the odd ones who were willing to take on the new kid!

Parents complicated the situation…

From Shanah's list on Persians and Jews coming of age in America.