The Puzzle.
The story “who’s Irish?” by Gish Jen is a story of an elderly Chinese woman, living with her daughter in the United States of America. She takes care of her granddaughter Sophie while her daughter goes to work; as a way of being supportive to her daughter. She does not like how Sophie is wild; she insists that no Chinese girl acts as she does. She ends up disciplining her the way a proper Chinese girl is raised, after she misbehaves which according to her it is through spanking. This brings conflict between the narrator and her daughter, Natalie. The two women argue and the narrator ends up having to move out. Eventually end up spending very little time with each other. Culture defines who we are. Each race encompasses a multitude …show more content…
The narrator does not like the idea that her daughter gets to go to work while her husband stays at home or goes to the gym. Even after getting a job, john loses it after a while making Natalie the only breadwinner in the family creating conflict since she works hard. “No money left over, because only one income, but lucky enough, got the babysitter for free” (Gish 228). Later, after the narrator moves out of her daughters’ house, the daughter and husband, John, hire a babysitter for their daughter yet the mother is around. My friend a few weeks ago came to my house and started crying. After letting her calm down, she explained to me that she was going through a lot of emotional torture. When African parents get to the United States, some tend to think they are still in Africa. She brought her mother to the United States to visit but before a month was over there was a lot of conflict between them regarding picking up kids from school and babysitting. It reached a point where she had to take her back home just to maintain the respect between them even though she really loved her mother and she could not blame her for her behavior. No one adapts to another culture in a …show more content…
Natalie, the narrators’ daughter had to make her mother move out of their big house in fear of getting a divorce; she is left with no one to turn to. Bess wishes she had a daughter too and does not seem to forget the pain she underwent to raise her four sons. “I did my best on raising those boys. But raising four boys with no father is no picnic” (Gish 229).The narrator is emotionally conflicted due to the fact that john does not get to go to work and she has no idea how her granddaughter will be in future. Divorce in most American homes happens due to lack of establishment of a common ground between the husband and wife. One of my very close friends had to file for a divorce because of the workload she was having and the fact that her husband was not trying to get a job at all. It became worse when he started filing for full custody of their children claiming that she was an unfit mother who was never there for her children. It was painful for me to watch the marriage break up because the real cause of the break up was the disagreement between the two cultures. Her mother-in-law did not like her at all. If the husband had stood up for her maybe something good would have come out of the
The story “who’s Irish?” by Gish Jen is a story of an elderly Chinese woman, living with her daughter in the United States of America. She takes care of her granddaughter Sophie while her daughter goes to work; as a way of being supportive to her daughter. She does not like how Sophie is wild; she insists that no Chinese girl acts as she does. She ends up disciplining her the way a proper Chinese girl is raised, after she misbehaves which according to her it is through spanking. This brings conflict between the narrator and her daughter, Natalie. The two women argue and the narrator ends up having to move out. Eventually end up spending very little time with each other. Culture defines who we are. Each race encompasses a multitude …show more content…
The narrator does not like the idea that her daughter gets to go to work while her husband stays at home or goes to the gym. Even after getting a job, john loses it after a while making Natalie the only breadwinner in the family creating conflict since she works hard. “No money left over, because only one income, but lucky enough, got the babysitter for free” (Gish 228). Later, after the narrator moves out of her daughters’ house, the daughter and husband, John, hire a babysitter for their daughter yet the mother is around. My friend a few weeks ago came to my house and started crying. After letting her calm down, she explained to me that she was going through a lot of emotional torture. When African parents get to the United States, some tend to think they are still in Africa. She brought her mother to the United States to visit but before a month was over there was a lot of conflict between them regarding picking up kids from school and babysitting. It reached a point where she had to take her back home just to maintain the respect between them even though she really loved her mother and she could not blame her for her behavior. No one adapts to another culture in a …show more content…
Natalie, the narrators’ daughter had to make her mother move out of their big house in fear of getting a divorce; she is left with no one to turn to. Bess wishes she had a daughter too and does not seem to forget the pain she underwent to raise her four sons. “I did my best on raising those boys. But raising four boys with no father is no picnic” (Gish 229).The narrator is emotionally conflicted due to the fact that john does not get to go to work and she has no idea how her granddaughter will be in future. Divorce in most American homes happens due to lack of establishment of a common ground between the husband and wife. One of my very close friends had to file for a divorce because of the workload she was having and the fact that her husband was not trying to get a job at all. It became worse when he started filing for full custody of their children claiming that she was an unfit mother who was never there for her children. It was painful for me to watch the marriage break up because the real cause of the break up was the disagreement between the two cultures. Her mother-in-law did not like her at all. If the husband had stood up for her maybe something good would have come out of the