Who's Irish?: Stories [Hardcover]

Gish Jen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 18, 1999

In eight wonderfully alive stories, the acclaimed author of Mona in the Promised Land and Typical American chronicles Chinese and other Americans as they exuberantly win, lose, love, hate, overachieve, underachieve, and generally take on America--with sometimes comic, sometimes heartbreaking results.

Life now is not what it was a generation ago, but is it any easier? A Chinese-American woman attempts to discipline her Chinese-Irish-American grandchild, only to come up against her daughter's state-of-the-art parenting. A grown man flees to China to escape his disapproving mother, "who called every day, lest he forget she was not speaking to him." A computer expert accidentally books himself into a welfare hotel. A bohemian art student turned young mother finds herself entrenched in PTA meetings and soccer games when her WASP husband opts out and takes off for the woods. A family takes its first comically disastrous steps toward joining a country club. The stories in Who's Irish? prove once again that Gish Jen is an essential writer for our time--a writer who moves and entertains us as she updates the American Dream.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Nobody writes about the immigrant experience like Gish Jen. What sets her apart from other ethnic writers is the wide-angle lens she turns not only on her own Chinese American ethnic group, but on Jewish Americans, African Americans, Irish Americans, and just about any other hyphenate you'd care to name. Though her tales are filtered through an Asian experience, they are, at heart, the quintessential American story of immigration, assimilation, and occasional tensions with other ethnic communities. The title story, for example, is a neat variation on a time-worn theme: mothers and daughters. The narrator is an elderly Chinese woman whose thoroughly assimilated daughter, Natalie, has married into an Irish American family. Natalie is successful; her husband, John, is not. Natalie's mother comments early on:

I always thought Irish people are like Chinese people, work so hard on the railroad, but now I know why the Chinese beat the Irish. Of course, not all Irish are like the Shea family, of course not. My daughter tell me I should not say Irish this, Irish that.

The narrator has other thoughts on the Irish question as well, including the connection between national diet and world view: "Plain boiled food, plain boiled thinking," she says of John, then adds that "because I grew up with black bean sauce and hoisin sauce and garlic sauce, I always feel something is missing when my son-in-law talk." But it soon becomes apparent that the problems between the narrator and her daughter's family are less cultural than generational, and in the end the mother forms a surprising alliance.

Jen comes at the question of identity from another angle in "Duncan in China," in which a second-generation Chinese American man returns to Mainland China to teach English. Here she manages to delicately suggest the enormity of the differences between the very American Duncan and his Chinese students, coworkers, and relatives. And in "Birthmates" she places her computer programmer protagonist, Art Woo, in close proximity to the low-income, mostly black residents of a welfare hotel that he's accidentally checked into. Class, race, gender, and job security all figure into this brilliant, subtle story that looks at the dark side of the American dream and finds that failure comes in all colors. These eight stories are sharply written, filled with humor, pathos, and more than a few surprising twists and turns. Quite simply, Who's Irish? is a delight. --Alix Wilber

From Publishers Weekly

The Chinese-American author (Typical American, Mona in the Promised Land) is a known quantity by now, though her sometimes uproarious but just as often compassionate tales of culture clash always manage to find some new and surprising angles from which to ambush the reader. There are two novella-length tales in this breezy, assured collection: Duncan in China tells of a young man, a dropout at home, who achieves a certain bizarre status on a prolonged visit to contemporary China, and of the perplexing choices he has to make when all his usual assumptions are turned on their heads. House, House, Home is the account of Pammies two marriages, to wry, eccentric Scandinavian Sven and, later, to massively laid-back Carver from Hawaii, and the sorts of space these very different men give her to move in. As always with Jen, a multitude of details, domestic and behavioral, are acutely observed, and the impact, in barely 80 pages, is that of a much longer work. The title story is a delightfully rueful account of a Chinese grandmother trying to come to terms with her spoiled Irish grandchild, Birthmates is a cunningly woven mixture of farce and pathos about a born loser looking for a job at a convention and In the American Society portrays the mixed dignity and foolishness of a traditional Chinese man trying, and failing, to adapt to our odd mores.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1st edition (May 18, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375406212
• ISBN-13: 978-0375406218
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.3 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,360,617 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Gish Jen has published in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the New Republic, and other magazines, as well as in numerous anthologies, including The Best American Short Stories of the Century. Her honors include a Lannan Literary Award and a Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. For further info, please see www.gishjen.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The definitive East-coast Asian-American voice, August 8, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Who's Irish?: Stories (Hardcover)

I am a working mom with little time to read fiction. But the need exists. Amy Tam never did it for me. Maxine Kingston Wong was too ethereal. Finally, I found an Asian American writer with an East Coast sensibility! Gish Jen's new book of short stories is a delight. There are treasures in this volume. For me, she is the most down-to-earth and funny(!) Asian American woman writing today. "House, House, Home" is one of the best short stories that I have ready anywhere, anytime. The short story format (some are more polished than others, but all are worth the time) makes for good summer reading.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent read, July 22, 2000

By 

Dana Lightstone - See all my reviews

This review is from: Who's Irish?: Stories (Hardcover)

Some of these stories were outstanding, all were good. The title story was great. This book is an excellent commentary on American society, and the experience of being an immigrant. This collection, like many other short story collections explores the theme of "East meets West," for lack of a more politically correct term. It explores some valuable questions in todays society. Jen's writing style is also excellent, and much improved since "Mona in the Promised Land."

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A definite improvement from Mona in the Promised Land, August 3, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Who's Irish?: Stories (Hardcover)

I may have preferred this anthology of short stories to her last work (Mona in the Promised Land) because I tend to lean in that literary direction but I also noticed an improvement of Jen's writing style. Where as in the last novel I felt as if she wandered in certain sections, in each of her stories in Who's Irish? she seemed both eloquent but more straight to the point. Like Amy Tan, Jen is an Chinese American writer that is talented enough to relate her ideas and themes to the reader without him or her having to be of the same ethnic background. She did this exceedingly well in the short story House, House, Home with the protagonist Pammie.