Gish Jen’s story titled Who’s Irish is a story about a chinese grandmother who was struggling to adapt to a different culture. Throughout the story, the grandmother’s perception and understanding conflicted with that of her daughter, Natalie, her son-in-law, John Shae, and, her granddaughter, Sophie. The narrator is a Chinese Grandmother who was nameless and spoke in the first person point of view. When the Grandmother first immigrated to the United States along with her daughter and her husband (who passed away,) she found success through her restaurant. She believed that her hardwork and dedication gave rise to her success in a different country. This was why the grandmother does not like her in-laws. She presumes that because they are …show more content…
The narrator said “Sophie is a three year years American age, but already I see her nice Chinese side swallowed up by her wild Shea side.” Sophie’s “wild side” which can be interpreted as her Irish side. Whenever Sophie misbehaves which include: taking off her clothes or attack/kick her mom, the Grandmother blames it on her “wide side” and she also believes that the only way to discipline Sophie is by spanking her. Of course Natalie will not allow her mother to spank Sophie because that clashes with American traditional way to discipline a kid which was to “talk” to Sophie. Again, the reader can see that the Grandmother was struggling to become accustomed to the way American family works. Because of this cultural conflict, the reader will conclude that Americans are selfish and we can see that in the story. Natalie wants her mother to help her in the house, babysit her daughter and do as much for her as she can, but doesn’t expect her mother to interfere with her way of discipline. This means that either Natalie has completely forgotten about her culture or that she simply moved on with the new identity second and third generation Chinese Americans were developing and also wants her daughter to follow the same …show more content…
For instance, when I first came to the United States, I realized that most Americans have strong affection for their pets which was different from where I was raised. Similarly, just like the Grandmother could not understand why Sophie shouldn’t be spanked or why John is lazy, that was how I couldn’t understand why someone’s death didn’t make headline but the death of a dog did. I’m not saying that this is an American cultural thing, it’s just an observation. An example of this was 2 years ago when Jeanette Riley was shot by the cops. The cops said that she had a knife which was why they shot her but what was upsetting about this incident was that it hardly made the news headline. Fast forward fourteen hours later on the same day, in the same city, a cop mistakenly shot a dog named Arfee who was left in the car by the owner. This time around the news of a dog getting shot made the headlines in the New York daily news. People protested and the police ruled the death of Arfee as unjust. The owner was rewarded with a large sum of money as compensation for losing his pet along with an official apology from the police department. While Riley’s husband and three children did not receive any apology or compensation. What! That’s insane! This was my reaction and keep in mind that I was fresh out of Nigeria when these incident occurred. I couldn 't understand this contradictory killing of
Using the detail,“Dinner threw me deeper into despair,” conveys the painful feelings caused by her family at dinner (Paragraph 5). This detail indicates that Tan was continuingly losing hope that the night would get better. Tan reveals these agonizing feelings to make the reader feel compunctious. In making the reader feel sorry for her, Tan knows she can continue to misreport details in the passage without being questioned. The detail,“What would he think of our noisy Chinese relatives who lacked proper American manners,” emblematizes the dishonor Tan feels towards her relatives and cultural background (Paragraph 2). This detail implies that due to Tan’s attraction to Robert, she will detract her feelings of others to better her relationship with Robert. Tan used this detail to reveal that if Tan cannot better her relationship with Robert, she will become despondent. As a result of distorting details, the passage illustrates Tan’s dishonorable feelings towards her cultural
In the story, "Fish Cheeks" it talks about how Amy Tan's Chinese family invites an American boy's family over for dinner. Amy Tan wants to impress him and thinks that he wont like the food her mother made even though it is her favorite food. She can tell that he doesn't like the food and she is embarased. So, Amy wants to fit in.
Gish Jen’s “Who’s Irish” tells the story of a sixty-eight-year-old Chinese immigrant and her struggle to accept other cultures different from her own. The protagonist has been living in the United States for a while but she is still critical of other cultures and ethnicities, such as her son-in-law’s Irish family and the American values in which her daughter insists on applying while raising the protagonist’s granddaughter. The main character finds it very hard to accept the American way of disciplining and decides to implement her own measures when babysitting her granddaughter Sophie. When the main character’s daughter finds out that she has been spanking Sophie she asks her mother to move out of the house and breaks any further contact between them by not taking Sophie to visit her grandmother in her new place. The central idea of the story is that being an outsider depends on one’s perspective and that perspective determines how one’s life will be.
The "awful grandmother" (Cisneros p.30) is an example of a person in the story living in two cultural worlds, while she clings to her cultural heritage, she still doesn't want to accept the American culture of the children. The children, in the story, may look like Native Americans or Mexicans, but their main language is English. The children also use examples of American culture with the comic characters, "Flash Gordon" and "Ming the Merciless."
Justina Chen Headley explores in her book Nothing but the Truth (and a few white lies) the search for her protagonist’s identity, Patty Ho, which is a part Taiwanese, part American girl. Headley displays the mother as a one-dimensional parent who is holding onto conservative and traditional Taiwanese values, and is imposing her cultural values onto her daughter as a justification for her strict parenting style.
For example, what happened in Baltimore led to social movements in New York and New Jersey and eventually a mass behavior or movement known as “Black Lives Matter”. With very rare exception, the stories on the news and on front pages of newspapers only show those acts of civil disobedience that escalate to violence. Rather than cover a peaceful protest, they would have a news story where police had to arrest protesters. People form opinions on events, cultures, politics and even other races based on what they see on the news. Two virtually identical situations can be understood in two completely different ways based on the way it is reported. For example, “the Associated Press wire service distributed two stories on August 30, 2005. In one, a White couple is shown wading through floodwater and the caption reads "Two residents wade through chest-deep water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store . . ." In the other image, a young Black man is shown in nearly the exact same situation but the caption reads "A young man walks through chest deep flood water after looting a grocery store in New Orleans . . ." The conclusion is that White victims of Katrina found food while Black victims stole food” (Haider). So why didn’t the young Black man find food? This is a part of racism and stereotyping that has been prevalent in society and news coverage for many
Conflict constantly occurs between the mother and daughter in “Who's Irish” surrounding the child rearing of the daughter’s daughter. When discussing her trouble-making granddaughter, the mother explains, “John and my daughter agree Sophie is a problem, but they don’t know what to do. You spank her, she’ll stop, I say another day. But they say, Oh, no. In America, parents not supposed to spank the child. [...] I don’t want you to touch Sophie, she says. No spanking, period” (Jen pg. 3). Later, the daughter insists that the mother use language as an attempt to teach the granddaughter how to behave properly instead of spanking. The mother says, “use your words, my daughter says. That’s what we tell Sophie. How about you set a good example” (Jen pg. 3-4). Thus, the different approaches in child-rearing brings stress to the relationship between first-generation American children and their immigrant
In the short story, "Two Kinds" by Amy Tan, a Chinese mother and daughter are at odds with each other. The mother pushes her daughter to become a prodigy, while the daughter (like most children with immigrant parents) seeks to find herself in a world that demands her Americanization. This is the theme of the story, conflicting values. In a society that values individuality, the daughter sought to be an individual, while her mother demanded she do what was suggested. This is a conflict within itself. The daughter must deal with an internal and external conflict. Internally, she struggles to find herself. Externally, she struggles with the burden of failing to meet her mother’s expectations. Being a first-generation Asian American, I have faced the same issues that the daughter has been through in the story.
The grandmother is the central character in the story "A good man is hard to find," by Flannery O'Connor. The grandmother is a manipulative, deceitful, and self-serving woman who lives in the past. She doesn't value her life as it is, but glorifies what it was like long ago when she saw life through rose-colored glasses. She is pre-scented by O'Connor as being a prim and proper lady dressed in a suit, hat, and white cotton gloves. This woman will do whatever it takes to get what she wants and she doesn't let anyone else's feelings stand in her way. She tries to justify her demands by convincing herself and her family that her way is not only the best way, but the only way. The grandmother is determined to change her family's vacation destination as she tries to manipulate her son into going to Tennessee instead of Florida. The grandmother says that "she couldn't answer to her conscience if she took the children in a direction where there was a convict on the loose." The children, they tell her "stay at home if you don't want to go." The grandmother then decides that she will have to go along after all, but she is already working on her own agenda. The grandmother is very deceitful, and she manages to sneak the cat in the car with her. She decides that she would like to visit an old plantation and begins her pursuit of convincing Bailey to agree to it. She describes the old house for the children adding mysterious details to pique their curiosity. "There was a secret panel in this house," she states cunningly knowing it is a lie. The grandmother always stretches the truth as much as possible. She not only lies to her family, but to herself as well. The grandmother doesn't live in the present, but in the past. She dresses in a suit to go on vacation. She states, "in case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady." She constantly tries to tell everyone what they should or should not do. She informs the children that they do not have good manners and that "children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else." when she was a child.
Amy Tan’s “Fish Cheeks” describes Tan’s upbringing as a Chinese-American caught in between two cultures. In “Fish Cheeks” Tan’s crush Robert and his family were invited to Tan’s house for Christmas, Amy was embarrassed of Robert’s impression of her Chinese relatives, cuisine, and culture (Tan 110). Tan’s situation is not uncommon as millions of first generation Americans encounter similar situations while living within two cultures. Albeit the extreme embarrassment Tan endured throughout the encounter, she contends that her mother taught her a valuable lesson in appreciating her Chinese culture (111). Ultimately, Tan's purpose was to implore first generation Americans to embrace both of their cultures, in spite of its unique traditions (Tan
On the contrary she is seen by the granddaughters as surprisingly “cool” (Meyer, 74) and accepting of their quirks. While the grandmother was “Confucian born and trained, and a Buddhist and all” (Meyer, 74), she seems to have dropped these strict ideals and somewhat accepted her granddaughters American culture. For example, at the beginning of the story, one of the granddaughters, Lea, was wearing a rather provocative outfit for a fancy party she was attending later, and while the grandmother told her that she looked like a “high class whore”, she then admits it was merely a teasing compliment, and on top of that, instructs her granddaughter to “do the cha-cha for [her]” since she “didn’t get to do much when [she] was young, with [her] clubbed foot and the wars and everything else” (Meyer, 73). Her Confucian ideals put utmost importance on how once carries themselves(1), and dressing like this would definitely create conflict. This is the first concrete example of the grandmother not only accepting her granddaughter’s different lifestyle, but also showing some envy, or at least understanding why it would be enjoyable. While a traditional Confucian upbringing would not allow anything close to this, the grandmother overrides this and starts to see the perks of enjoying
Oftentimes the children of immigrants to the United States lose the sense of cultural background in which their parents had tried so desperately to instill within them. According to Walter Shear, “It is an unseen terror that runs through both the distinct social spectrum experienced by the mothers in China and the lack of such social definition in the daughters’ lives.” This “unseen terror” is portrayed in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club as four Chinese women and their American-born daughters struggle to understand one another’s culture and values. The second-generation women in The Joy Luck Club prove to lose their sense of Chinese values, becoming Americanized.
In the story "A Pair of Tickets," by Amy Tan, a woman by the name of Jing-mei struggles with her identity as a Chinese female. Throughout her childhood, she "vigorously denied" (857) that she had any Chinese under her skin. Then her mother dies when Jing-Mei is in her 30's, and only three months after her father receives a letter from her twin daughters, Jing-Mei's half sisters. It is when Jing-mei hears her sisters are alive, that she and her dad take a trip overseas to meet her relatives and finally unites with her sisters. This story focuses on a woman's philosophical struggle to accept her true identity.
America was not everything the mothers had expected for their daughters. The mothers always wanted to give their daughters the feather to tell of their hardships, but they never could. They wanted to wait until the day that they could speak perfect American English. However, they never learned to speak their language, which prevented them from communicating with their daughters. All the mothers in The Joy Luck Club had so much hope for their daughters in America, but instead their lives ended up mirroring their mother’s life in China. All the relationships had many hardships because of miscommunication from their different cultures. As they grew older the children realized that their ...
In her short story "Two Kinds," Amy Tan utilizes the daughter's point of view to share a mother's attempts to control her daughter's hopes and dreams, providing a further understanding of how their relationship sours. The daughter has grown into a young woman and is telling the story of her coming of age in a family that had emigrated from China. In particular, she tells that her mother's attempted parental guidance was dominated by foolish hopes and dreams. This double perspective allows both the naivety of a young girl trying to identify herself and the hindsight and judgment of a mature woman.