Chapter 9, You Can Call Me Al by Firoozeh Dumas is about Firoozeh’s family ritual as she calls it to go to las vegas. Before they leave her, mother holds a koran above the door frame and they have to walk under it because they think that it causes a safe trip. Her older brothers don’t go with them because they are in college and Firoozeh thinks that they are lucky which means that she doesn't like to go to las vegas. She says that they have to wake up early in the morning to leave from their house. She then says that they go to eat breakfast at dennys because her father likes to go there because of the clean bathrooms. They always stay at the stardust hotel because kazems friend al works there. Firoozeh doesn’t like al and hopes he ends up in jail. Her father loves to play blackjack and says that lots of things cause bad luck. They like the buffets because they think that it is cheap for lots of food. Firoozeh says that what made las vegas more awful is because it reminded her of “real vacations”. She talks about her vacations that she had and how much she liked them. At the end of the chapter, Firoozeh says that when she grows up, she wants to travel the world in search for rainbows and bears.
Chapter 24, A Nose By Any Other Name by Firoozeh Dumas is about when Firoozeh was in berkeley. She recalls a librarian that had a very ugly and a big nose. She thought that she looked like a toucan and that god switched her nose with a toucan. What she cared about most wasn’t her nose but how she didn’t really care and how the librarian carried herself like a beauty queen. She says that in iran noses are a really important thing and that plastic surgery is a huge industry. She says that her families noses are big but reasonable. She says that when she was an adolescent, she knew that she had been spared. She said that her nose was hooked but not horrible. She says that at on point was about to get surgery but didn’t end up doing it because she didn’t respect the doctor who would be performing the surgery. Her father was relieved because he didn’t want to spend that much money on it anyway. She stated that whenever somebody would complain about their nose she would tell them the story about the librarian. One time Firoozeh, Her husband and her kids stayed in a motel. She turned on the TV to see the toucan lady naked in a TV show. The librarian had become a nudist. She was being interviewed. In the interview, she said that she had accepted her body. Firoozeh gets sad because she remembers of all the women who had paid lots of money to fix their noses just to find love.
Some similarities of the two chapters is that she doesn’t really like two characters in each chapter. In “You Can Call Me Al” she doesn’t like Al and in “A Nose By Any Other Name” she doesn’t really like the librarian in the beginning because of how confident she is even though she had an ugly nose. Fizoozeh was probably feeling a little anger or maybe even jealousy because of how confident the librarian was and she probably didn’t like that. Also in “You Can Call Me Al” Firoozeh doesn’t like las vegas. Both chapters end with Firoozeh learning about something in a way. In “You Can Call Me Al” she learns that she wants to travel the world in search for rainbows and bears. In “A Nose By Any Other Name” she learns that women who fix their nose for lots of money to find love makes her sad.
Some differences are that in “You Can Call Me Al” is about her vacations. In “A Nose By Any Other Name” it is about noses and how much they mean in iranian culture. A small difference is that the chapter name “A Nose By Any Other Name” has more to do with the whole chapter than “You Can Call Me Al” which only really has little to do with that chapter. Another difference is that in “A Nose By Any Other Name” she is an adult and has a family of her own. In “You Can Call Me Al” she is still a kid and is with her mom and dad. She is in berkeley in one and is in vegas in another.