Analyse af Gish Jensens novelle 'Who's Irish'

The story who´s Irish was written in 1999, by Gish Jen. The story is told by an immigrant narrator from china. A grandmother in fact. The grandmother tells her story and how she experienced moving from china to USA. With her, she had her husband and daughter Natalie. In the US, her and her husband ran a Chinese restaurant. The grandmother didn’t like her daughters husband John, nor the husband’s brothers. They were unemployed, Irish “plain boiled thinking”. When John finally try getting a job, the narrator starts complaining, about the way her daughter and john raise their daughter, Natalie.

Immigration, affects both the individual and the family. Languages barricades, culture, and other challenges, sees clearly in the story.

Narration, the 1. person narrator makes the story more trustworthy. The narrator judges everything and everybody and compare it to the Chinese standards. Considering her background, her comparing’s and judgmental behaviour, is not surprising. If you were to, move to a foreign country, a foreign culture, you would do the same. Her trustworthiness comes from the first-person perspective, we get to know her, and we certainly also get to follow her journey.

The narrator, has some very specific thoughts upon, the differences between Chinese, Irish and American people. Such as the Chinese people know their family: “I tell them, Confucius say a filial son knows what color his mother’s hair is”, compared to the Irish and American who don’t. The Chinese being hard working versus the Irish and American being unemployed, lazy and “plain boiled thinking”. Last but not least, in China, you have to work hard to be a man, and in America you have to go to the gym to be a man: “her husband go to the gym to be a man”.