Firoozeh's Perception Of The American Dream

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The Iranian Revolution created a vast sense of discrimination towards Firoozeh and her family while they were living in America, therefore diminishing their experience of the “American Dream”. It is established throughout the novel that Firoozeh and her family had high hopes for new, boundless lives, when moving to America. The author explains her father’s eccentric expectations about America, “To him, America was a place where anyone, no matter how humble his background, could become an important person. It was a kind and orderly nation full of clean bathrooms, a land where traffic laws were obeyed and where whales jumped through hoops. It was the Promised Land” (Dumas, 3-4). Although they did experience opportunities that would have been …show more content…

Before the revolution when Dumas and her family first moved to Whittier, California, a mother and her daughter kindly helped Firoozeh and her mother find their way home, inattentive to the fact they were Iranian. “This kind stranger agreed to take us back to our house” (Dumas, 7). On the other hand, after eradicating the Shah, Iranian terrorists had a substantial motive to capture American hostages, and the country began to develop hostility towards all Iranians. Dumas recalls, “During our stay in Newport Beach, the Iranian Revolution took place and a group of Americans were taken hostage in the American embassy in Tehran. Overnight, Iranians living in America became, to say the least, very unpopular. For some reason, many Americans began to think that all Iranians, despite outward appearances to the contrary, could at any given moment get angry and take prisoners” (Dumas, ). Ignorance and xenophobia became the prime factors that led to this intense discrimination. The author describes the injustice her father experienced while searching for a job, “At the sight of the Iranian passport, the lawyer turned pale, ‘I am so sorry, but the government of Saudi Arabia does not accept Iranians at this time.’” (Dumas, 120). Contradicting with what Dumas’s father assumed America would provide for him, a job, he was turned down by many of them by the

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