Firoozeh Dumas Speech Critique

This summer along with all of the other freshman at Ball State was given a book titled “Funny in Farsi”. This funny book was wrote by a woman named Firoozeh Dumas. She originally wrote her book, which is broken up into several stories of her life, to give to her children. After discovering her talent and passion for writing she perused publishing her book and now years later, she has been invited to be our freshman reader. Being our freshman reader she was asked to come and give a speech over her life and how it plays into the stories she wrote about in her book. On September 22nd Emens Auditorium was open for the public, at 7:30, to come and listen to Mrs. Dumas inform about her story. I was one of the many that had attended her speech. I have decided to do my speaker critique on Firoozeh Dumas because of the character she put into her stories and I figured it would be interesting to see how that transferred into her speech that night.

Dumas’s conclusion she told a final and most resent funny story about getting pulled over for speeding with an American friend she had made. This friend was held hostage in Iran years prior to and ironically enough, her and Firoozeh became very close friends because of this unfortunate encounter. I believe that she purposely left off with a story such as this, to leave the idea that Iranians and Americans can still be friends even after all of the struggles between the two countries. This conclusion was very effective I believe, because it left the audience with a warm feeling inside about Iranians, this is most likely what she was hoping for. By using personal experiences of historical events such as the hostage situation and 9/11 she created credibility and gained trust from the audience. Then she was able to show her side of the story that most Americans do not get to see. By informing us about her experiences she was able to be a representative for all the falsely accused Iranians, and she represented them very