“Who’s Irish” by Gish Jen

“Who’s Irish” by Gish Jen

“Who’s Irish” by Gish Jen is a short story that narrates how a 68-year-old Chinese immigrant struggles to get used to the ways of the American family. She compares the Chinese way of life with the American way and finds the latter way more messed up. This, for instance, is seen as quoted from the story where she says, “in China, daughter take care of mother. Here it is the other way round. Mother help daughter; mother ask, anything else I can do? Otherwise daughter complain mother is not supportive. I tell daughter, we do not have this word in Chinese, supportive”, (Jen, 1999). The narrator is helping her daughter Natalie raise her granddaughter Sophie. She is disappointed by the way her granddaughter grows up accustomed to the American culture and wishes she could instill the Chinese way of living in her. Sophie adopts the behavior of going naked, which the narrator does not encourage. She tries to lure Sophie to wear her clothes, but all goes in vain. Then, she spanks Sophie, and at this point, she pays attention to her instructions. Out of this, she never takes off her clothes in fear of being spanked. Natalie on her side does not take heed to her mother’s culture and has let it go off the air. Sophie fears her grandmother and develops contempt towards her. One day Sophie hides in a foxhole with a spade full of sand, and as soon as the narrator goes to look for her, she throws it against her. Since the narrator cannot fit in the foxhole, she begs Sophie to come out of the hole. Knowing that she has done an offense that would cause her being spanked, Sophie does not come out of the foxhole. She goes silent which leaves the narrator confused whether she is dead or asleep. She uses a stick to provoke Sophie to cry, but the efforts bare no fruits. She gives up and decides to go home without Sophie, where she meets her angry parents. They go to the playground to fetch her and calmly John–Natalie’s husband–finds out that Sophie is asleep. They take her out of the hole and realize that she has bruises on her skin. Natalie realizes that the narrator has been mistreating her

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daughter by canning her, and this hurts their mother-daughter relationship. She is so bitter with her mother that she does not consider her as a source of support anymore. The story ends with the narrator wondering how she had raised her beautiful daughter well, and now she has defied the odds and failed to take her advice.

The story is narrated from the perspective of a grandmother who interestingly justifies the difference between the Irish and the Chinese culture. On reading the story, one can ultimately feel the angles a grandmother hold towards her household. It reveals how older people are old-fashioned and how they fail to keep pace with a dynamic society. The narrator who is Chinese believes that the Irish culture is no way better than her culture, making her ethnocentric. Firstly, she accuses the Shea family, who are Irish, of taking life jokingly as all what John does is going to the gym instead of looking for a job and provide for the family. Secondly, she sees the manner in which Sophie is being raised as unworthy contrary to Natalie’s perspective.

This narrative demonstrates achievements and limitations of the different cultures in upbringing children. At first, Sophie’s poor behavior of taking off her clothes is not corrected by speaking to her. It is until the grandmother adopts hard stances on her that she becomes obedient and does not repeat that behavior. Nevertheless, this concept of canning children is faulted when Sophie gets in a foxhole. It shows how children can defy parents’ instructions when they get the means, especially when the parent-child relationship is fragile. Knowing what was awaiting her, Sophie could not respond to her grandmother. She finally responds to her parents who do not cane her and thus giving credit to a calmer philosophy of dealing with children. This softness leads to children taking parents’ advice for granted. Presumably, the two ways have their pros

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and cons, and therefore parents are called upon to have the proper discipline instilled in their children while maintaining a significant parent-child relationship.

The two stories “Who’s Irish” and “An Ethnic Trump” are similar in several ways. They both speculate over the same thing, that is, the superiority of Chinese culture over Irish culture. The featuring characters in these two narratives are linked to the two cultures through parenthood. As they both reside in America, they try as much to abandon their Chinese instincts and live in a more Irish- American way. As for “An Ethnic Trump,” Luke runs away from his Chinese makeup when he decided to turn his black hair yellowish so he could look like a blonde-haired guy and join the rest in a birthday party, (Jen, 1996). He felt the burden of being discriminated against and wanted to be like his friends. In the other story, Sophie does not seem to be at ease with her Chinese ethnocentric grandmother. Natalie too does not adopt her mother’s Chinese philosophies. However, one story, “Who’s Irish,” embraces parents of different ethnicities to raise children taking advantage of their double heritage. This is observed when the grandmother’s Chinese way of treating Sophie becomes successful in making her stop taking off her clothes and becomes more obedient. On the other side, John and Natalie’s American way of treating Sophie is what compels her to come out of the foxhole. The story “An Ethnic Trump,” portrays how children born of two cultural heritages are subject to violence, isolation, and bullying from the natives. Luke is intervened by two older boys who question him of his Chinese origin. In a way, this story serves as a continuation of Sophie’s life but in a different context.