In the short story Who’s Irish by Gish Jen and Everyday Use written by Alice Walker, both authors address generational conflicts between mothers and daughters, as well as struggles to coexist while living in very different cultural mindsets. The moral of both stories is that cross-cultural issues exist in every family tree and we often find comfort in unlikely places. While a mother may not agree with her daughter’s choices she never loses love, and while a daughter may not like decisions that are made by their mother she never loses respect. Both are stories about women going through struggle to integrate and adept into modern American life, two mothers struggle to understand their daughters and the lives they are immersed in. Gish Jen is trying to communicate a sense of loss a mother experiences because she does not understand her daughter and struggles to adapt in Who’s Irish. The authors point is that American life through the eyes of an elderly foreigner is hardly understandable, things like, the wife being the bread winner, career oriented women, marital problems, and gender specific roles that are too rigid. Through the grandmother's voice; the author develops these themes with humor and sympathy, written in broken English, the she intends for the reader to see how difficult the world is to express in a language that is foreign to you the reader, perhaps as a way to contrast how different her thinking is compared to the world she lives in, America. The author emphasizes the grandmothers love for both her daughter and granddaughter throughout, her love for her family never ends in spite of her confusion over their culture and the way they choose to live, constantly comparing the way situations and people are to the wa... ... middle of paper ... ...ish was more thoughtful and caring in trying to become accustomed to her daughters ways, whereas Mama in Everyday Use was more rigid, she preferred her lifestyle the way it was and she had no intention of changing, nor could she couldn’t understand why Dee would want anything more, as she and Maggie were happy where they were at. The irony of both stories isn’t hateful or bitter but a message of love and caring despite differences. In the end we are left wondering whether the results of the quandaries are right or wrong, and to question our own motives with our families, relationships, and lives. Works Cited Jen, Gish. "Who's Irish." 1999. Literature: Craft and Voice. Vol. 1. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2010. 105-10. Print. Fiction. Walker, Alice. "Everyday Use." 1973. Literature: Craft and Voice. Vol. 1. Boston: McGraw- Hill, 2010. 608-13. Print. Fiction.
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
...nt to those generations. Dee is educated and represents a modern generation that portrays freedom because she chooses to leave her rural home and start a different lifestyle, where she represents the African culture and plans to marry a man she selected. However, Mama represents an older generation where she is not a confident, educated, African-American, but deeply believes in her heritage because it is one of the last valuable possessions that she owns and represents the labor her family experienced. Despite this, heritage is beautiful remembrance of where people came from and distinguishes the struggle their family made to continue their legacy, but create a new life, as well.
Thru-out the centuries, regardless of race or age, there has been dilemmas that identify a family’s thru union. In “Hangzhou” (1925), author Lang Samantha Chang illustrates the story of a Japanese family whose mother is trapped in her believes. While Alice Walker in her story of “Everyday Use” (1944) presents the readers with an African American family whose dilemma is mainly rotating around Dee’s ego, the narrator’s daughter. Although differing ethnicity, both families commonly share the attachment of a legacy, a tradition and the adaptation to a new generation. In desperation of surviving as a united family there are changes that they must submit to.
Intergenerational conflicts are an undeniable facet of life. With every generation of society comes new experiences, new ideas, and many times new morals. It is the parent’s job go work around these differences to reach their children and ensure they receive the necessary lessons for life. Flannery O’Connor makes generous use of this idea in several of her works. Within each of the three short stories, we see a very strained relationship between a mother figure and their child. We quickly find that O’Conner sets up the first to be receive the brunt of our attention and to some extent loathing, but as we grow nearer to the work’s characteristic sudden and violent ending, we grow to see the finer details and what really makes these relations
Both mothers compare their two daughters to each other. In Everyday Use the mother tells us that "Dee is lighter than Maggie, with nicer hair and a fuller figure." She Fahning -2-speaks of the fire that burned and scarred Maggie. She tells us how Maggie is not bright, how she shuffles when she walks. Comparing her with Dee whose feet vwere always neat-looking, as if God himself had shaped them." We also learn of Dee's "style" and the way she awes the other girls at school with it.
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.
Family dynamics present interesting revelations, especially regarding the relationship between parents and children. While most families undoubtedly encounter dysfunction at some point throughout life, immigrant families seemingly experience such stress continually. A handful of short stories, including “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan, “Who’s irish” by Gish Jen, and “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers” by Yiyun Li, demonstrate how strained relations erupt in immigrant families. Familial tension noticeably arises because of the immigrant parents’ inability to fully adjust to the American way of life. Further, immigrant parents adhere to strict expectations in an attempt to uphold the family’s conservative heritage. Finally, immigrant parents typically
She anticipates that soon her daughter Maggie will be married and she will be living peacefully alone. Mama decides that she will wait in the yard for her daughter Dee's arrival. Mama knows that her other daughter, Maggie, will be nervous throughout Dee's stay, self -conscious of her scars and burn marks and jealous of Dee's much easier life. Mama fantasizes about reunion scenes on television programs in which a successful daughter embraces the parents who have made her success possible.
The second and third sections are about the daughters' lives, and the vignettes in each section trace their personality growth and development. Through the eyes of the daughters, we can also see the continuation of the mothers' stories, how they learned to cope in America. In these sections, Amy Tan explores the difficulties in growing up as a Chinese-American and the problems assimilating into modern society. The Chinese-American daughters try their best to become "Americanized," at the same time casting off their heritage while their mothers watch on, dismayed. Social pressures to become like everyone else, and not to be different are what motivate the daughters to resent their nationality. This was a greater problem for Chinese-American daughters that grew up in the 50's, when it was not well accepted to be of an "ethnic" background.
For many of us growing up, our mothers have been a part of who we are. They have been there when our world was falling apart, when we fell ill to the flu, and most importantly, the one to love us when we needed it the most. In “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan, it begins with a brief introduction to one mother’s interpretation of the American Dream. Losing her family in China, she now hopes to recapture part of her loss through her daughter. However, the young girl, Ni Kan, mimics her mother’s dreams and ultimately rebels against them.
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 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.
The generation that I was born into can sometimes be easily misunderstood by those in earlier generations. The individuals in my generation get thrown many different labels such as those that Rosie Evans (n.d.) listed in her article, “Millennials, Generation Y, the Lost Generation, boomerang kids, the Peter Pan generation…” and more. This can impact us as a whole because some will begin to live by the labels, in some cases that can be negative but in others it may be beneficial. Many people in this generation believe that they can’t reach their full potential due to labels and prejudgment, while there are others believe nothing can hold them back. When we get labeled all together that is also what may drive some to try to stand out from the
generation different from your parents’ generation? Use specific reasons and examples to explain your answer.
"The great model of affection of love in human beings is the sentiment which subsists between parents and children." as time goes by, things change. What was popular, and normal, in the 70s has changed. The older generation always wonder what had gone wrong with the younger generation and the younger generation also wonder why parents can`t understand their needs. The don`t know how to deal with the differences between each others and that has lead to a gap between parents and children.