Who's Irish By Gish Jen
By Sandy English
19 January 2000
Who's Irish? , by Gish Jen, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1999, 208 pp., $22.00
Gish Jen has published two well-received novels, Typical American (1992) and Mona in the Promised Land (1997), both of which deal with the entry of Chinese immigrants or their families into American life. Who's Irish? is her first book of short stories. It deals with much the same material, and the quality of the eight stories is uneven; two are quite satisfying, the rest less so.
“Birthmates” was selected by John Updike for inclusion in the Best American Short Stories of the Century. The protagonist, Art Woo, is a divorced computer salesman who sells a technology quickly becoming obsolete. As he prepares to market his wares at …show more content…
This is not to say they are poorly written, but Jen attempts to put too much of an epic face on small family tribulations. Her characters' problems are not big enough, or not intensely enough felt. The title piece, “Who's Irish?” exemplifies this. A Chinese grandmother living with her daughter and her daughter's Irish-American husband comes into conflict with their permissive attitudes as she cares for her thee-year-old granddaughter. No one understands her views on child rearing except her in-law, the American mother of her daughter's husband. The grandmother scarcely understands the lives or attitudes of the younger generation. Her daughter holds down a corporate job for which she is eternally preparing “presentations” and her daughter's husband is a sporadically employed managerial type. The grandmother has worked hard and fearlessly in operating a restaurant with her husband and does not understand the “sensitive” values of her daughter and son-in-law. In the end, the older and younger generations cannot accommodate their different views on child rearing, and the Chinese grandmother moves in with her Irish-American
19 January 2000
Who's Irish? , by Gish Jen, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1999, 208 pp., $22.00
Gish Jen has published two well-received novels, Typical American (1992) and Mona in the Promised Land (1997), both of which deal with the entry of Chinese immigrants or their families into American life. Who's Irish? is her first book of short stories. It deals with much the same material, and the quality of the eight stories is uneven; two are quite satisfying, the rest less so.
“Birthmates” was selected by John Updike for inclusion in the Best American Short Stories of the Century. The protagonist, Art Woo, is a divorced computer salesman who sells a technology quickly becoming obsolete. As he prepares to market his wares at …show more content…
This is not to say they are poorly written, but Jen attempts to put too much of an epic face on small family tribulations. Her characters' problems are not big enough, or not intensely enough felt. The title piece, “Who's Irish?” exemplifies this. A Chinese grandmother living with her daughter and her daughter's Irish-American husband comes into conflict with their permissive attitudes as she cares for her thee-year-old granddaughter. No one understands her views on child rearing except her in-law, the American mother of her daughter's husband. The grandmother scarcely understands the lives or attitudes of the younger generation. Her daughter holds down a corporate job for which she is eternally preparing “presentations” and her daughter's husband is a sporadically employed managerial type. The grandmother has worked hard and fearlessly in operating a restaurant with her husband and does not understand the “sensitive” values of her daughter and son-in-law. In the end, the older and younger generations cannot accommodate their different views on child rearing, and the Chinese grandmother moves in with her Irish-American