Iran Hostage Crisis

The Iranian Hostage Crisis The Iranian Hostage Crisis was a horrific event in which many American were captured and held hostage in the Iranian American embassy. In America, this was met with shock; spurring newfound hatred of Iranians. In the book Funny in Farsi, the author and her family, Iranian immigrants living in Southern California, are subjected to the scrutiny and prejudice of the people around them for that reason. At the end of the 1970’s, a new wave ushered America into a new decade; fear, disgust, and loathing spread as quickly as the news that almost ninety civilians had been captured in an American embassy in Iran’s capital city by an insurgent group of students. Across the nation, people from all walks of life joined
Despite being treated as second-rate citizens in the country that they lived in, the family of Iranian immigrants simply said that when people “asked us what we thought of the hostage situation. ‘It’s awful,’ we always said” (Dumas 39). Despite his support for American efforts to return the hostages and his American patriotism, the author’s father, Kazem, was laid off at an American oil company shortly after the Iranian Hostage Crisis. It is clear that the company was unable to separate Kazem’s nation of origin from the events in Iran. After being fired, he was unable to find a legitimate job with another company until well after the crisis had ended. He was turned down in Saudi Arabia and could not find a job anywhere else; global perceptions of Iranians had been tarnished during the Hostage Crisis. Firoozeh’s father was not the only one in the family subjected to scrutiny, her mother was equally impacted by the rabid hatred of Americans toward Iranians. Firoozeh explains that “People would hear my mother’s thick accent and ask us, ‘Where are you from?’ [...] Many
Although she had lived alongside her family in America for years, her life was thrown into discord after a group of insurgent student in Iran took over the American embassy and held those inside hostage. As soon as America became aware of the news, life for Iranians in America became far more difficult. Due to the crisis, her father was fired from his job and unable to find a new one and her mother had to lie about being Turkish in order to protect herself and her family from the rampant hatred towards Iranians. The actions of people thousands of miles away radically changed her life; people’s connection of the author’s family with the radical groups in Iran was unfair because they also believed that the events of the hostage crisis were equally terrifying and wrong, yet they were still ostracized for something they couldn’t help: their