Who's Irish

“Who’s Irish?” authored by Gish Jen, deals with cultural differences. The focus of this paper will bring to light these differences through the characters, plot and setting.
The setting of the story takes place in the United States of America. The narrator is an immigrant from China, living with her daughter and her family. She owned and operated a restaurant with her now deceased husband. As a result of the narrator’s daughter, Natatie, been the vice-president of a prominent bank, the period in which the story occurs may have been in the late 80’s or early 90’s as women, more predominately, held high end jobs in various industries. The climatically moment occurs at the playground in the local park.
The story is about an unnamed narrator, referred to as “Meanie” by her granddaughter, who takes us through the important events about her, her family and in-laws. The critical turning point of the story occurs when Sophie decide to hide in a foxhole; the narrator is unable to get her out which led her to being bruised in an effort to extricate the child.
The main characters of the story are the narrator, Natalie (daughter), Sophie (granddaughter), John Shea– Natalie’s husband and Bess Shea. The narrator is obviously a female immigrant from China to the United States of America, with her husband and young daughter. She is sixty-eight years old, equivalent to seventy years in China. The story suggest that the union produced one child when the narrator states that she made a promise to her dying husband that she would keep the family together “even though was just two of us”. She now lives with her career-focused daughter where she babysits the granddaughter, Sophie. The narrator is characterized as fierce, to the extent that she intimidates her husband, those who worked in the restaurant, even extortionists who frequently visited the restaurant are afraid of her “gang members who come to the restaurant all afraid of me”. This fierceness is claimed to be inherently...