This bouncy follow-up to Funny in Farsi has too much heart to be shrugged off as froth. Humorist Firoozeh Dumas resists playing gimmicky Western misperceptions of Islamic culture for gags. Instead, in Laughing Without an Accent, she affectionately chronicles a childhood in Iran, teenage years in Southern California, marriage to a French man, and her doting, nutty Persian family's diligent attempts to adapt to life in "Amrika". "The velour navy jogging suit is my male relatives' default attire," Dumas notes. "After all of them had acquired second and, in some cases, third pairs, they started getting catty."

Teasing out the absurdity underlying ordinary situations is the introspective Dumas' cup of tea, particularly when she reinvents her parents' quirks as universal comic zingers, rather than progress reports on their cultural assimilation. When her father turns eighty, 51 relatives cram aboard an Alaskan cruise ship, where they're tailed by the crew's pricey shutterbug. "My father...kept interrogating relatives about the number of photos they had purchased," observes Dumas. "Then converting that to Iranian currency and letting them know what that money would have purchased in prerevolutionary Iran."

Laughing Without an Accent is, I'm sure, wry and lively in its written form. But as narrated by Firoozeh Dumas — a 2005 Audie Award finalist — in her creamy-textured, toasted licorice voice, it upgrades to an indelible personal account. Dumas uses even pacing, few pauses, and a soothing, chatty tone to build intimacy. Her warm honeysuckle inflections groove with character-specific dialogue and she's most animated when narrating sections in Farsi, her lyrical native tongue, or imitating her mother's charmingly accented English. ("Vat? Eez very good.") She is such splendid company that when Dumas reflects "this feeling of being on the outside has shaped me into the perfect party guest", it seems even she must know she eez better than just very good. — Nita Rao