Who’s Irish tries to enlightening the reader with the difficulties of immigrating, and the difficulties of integrating into a foreign culture. The story is about a woman who comes from China. Who raised a girl within the United States, and is married to John Shea, a man from an Irish family. The main character goes on to state multiple negative stereotypes regarding the Irish, and describes how she came to America where she built up a restaurant with her deceased husband, and how the local gangs is afraid of her. All of her Irish family-in-law is on health benefits and the main character thinks that they are lazy and her son-in-law is depressed. 

The short story “Who’s Irish” is written by Gish Jen. The theme in the short story is cultural differences. 

The short story is about, an elderly Chinese woman who lives in America. She tries to help her daughter and her family, raise her granddaughter Sophie. She struggles while she watches Sophie grow up in this culture, and wishes to discipline her the way they do in China. This brings conflict between the grandmother and her daughter, Sophie’s mother. The two women argue and eventually have very little involvement in each other’s lives.

 

The story is about three generations of Chinese who have moved to Ireland . 

The mother is the main character in the text and she has a daughter who the grandmother must take care of. The daughter is “naughty”,and she uses bad language and do not listen when parents ask her to get dressed - and that the grandmother does not like when she is used to  the Chinese standards and how the chinese raises kids, with violence in relation to the Irish. At one time the daughter hides for her grandmother. The mother is against that children must be raised by chinese style and ask the grandmother not to use violence, but rather use words, if the daughter does something wrong. The text is also about "parents' behavior / parenting" for an example. When they are on the playground and a child says to sophie (the daughter) that she should try to kick his mother because he does it himself. The mother responds by saying "it's okay, it was certainly not intentionally". The grandmother gets sophie a little bit "under control" by using a stick (because she feels powerless and have tried everything else) to get her out of a small cave where she was hiding in, but Sophie mother is getting mad.

Summary

Theme: Cultural differences

“Who’s Irish” is a story about an old Chinese woman and her family living in New York. In the beginning of the story, the narrator writes about her granddaughter Sophie, who is the daughter of John who is Irish and the narrator’s daughter Natalie who is Chinese. The narrator describes how wild her granddaughter Sophie is. The narrator thinks that it is okay to hit her daughter, but her daughter tells her to use her words. The narrator takes Sophie with her to the park, where Sophie play with another kid. The other kid(Sinbad) learn Sophie that is okay to kick their parents. Sophie kick Sinbad’s mother and then the narrator hit’s Sophie. Natalie and John are furious because the narrator poke their daughter with a stick. Natalie wants the narrator to move and then John’s mother Bess say that the narrator can stay with her.