Who’s Irish?

By: Gish Jen

Has the Grandmother changed by the

end of the story?

No, the Grandmother has not changed by the end of the story; she has merely realized her situation.  Throughout the story, the Grandmother seems slightly upset by the fact that she is living with her daughter, Natalie, her son-in-law, John (Natalie’s husband), and her granddaughter (Natalie and John’s daughter), Sophie.  She is upset most by the fact that the Chinese customs she has followed all her life do not apply now that she is in America.  For example, at one point in the story she says, “In China, people say mixed children are supposed to be smart, and definitely my granddaughter Sophie is smart.  But Sophie is wild, Sophie is not like my daughter Natalie, or like me.”  By this quote, the Grandmother means to say that, due to Sophie’s being raised in America as opposed to China, Sophie has not been raised properly, as the Grandmother and Sophie’s mother have been.  The Grandmother is also upset by Sophie’s inability to behave in a proper manner.  One example of this is when the Grandmother hears that Sophie has been taking her clothes off in the park and that the nanny has been allowing her to do so.  The Grandmother sees this as Sophie’s being a wild and crazy child, and in her mind, Chinese children are not crazy and wild.  The Grandmother also has different methods of trying to teach Sophie how to be a proper Chinese girl.  While Sophie’s mother, Natalie, chooses to talk to Sophie to try and figure out what is going on, the Grandmother prefers to spank Sophie when she does something wrong.  For instance, the first time the Grandmother spanks Sophie is when they are in the park together.  “Still Sophie take off her clothes, until one day I spank her.  Not too hard, but she cry and cry, and when I tell her if she doesn’t put her clothes back on I’ll spank her again, she put her clothes back on.”  The story is composed of many instances in which the Grandmother tries to “help her [Sophie’s] Chinese side fight against her wild side.”  The climax of the story came when Sophie threw a shovel of sand at the Grandmother then hid in the foxhole.  At first, the Grandmother was upset and tried to call Sophie out of the hole.  Sophie would not come out, so the Grandmother began to poke a stick in the hole to scare Sophie out.  When that too failed, she said she was going to leave and go home.  She walked out to the playground gate and waited for Sophie to come out.  When she did not the Grandmother got worried and began to poke the stick in the hole again to see if she could hear Sophie say anything.  As it turned out, Sophie had fallen asleep in the foxhole and had many bruises on her body from her Grandmother poking her with a stick.  In the Grandmother’s eyes, the stick poking was necessary to try to see if Sophie was ok.  However, in the eyes of Sophie’s parents it was abuse.  The Grandmother was sent to live with Bess, John’s (Natalie’s husband’s) mother.  It is not until she is sent out of Natalie’s house that the Grandmother realizes how different Chinese culture is from American culture.  In the Chinese culture the daughter’s number one priority is to care for her mother.  However, in the American culture a mother is to care first for her daughter.  The Grandmother finally accepts that no matter how hard she tries to help her granddaughter, Sophie, distinguish her Chinese roots from her Irish/American roots it was just not going to work given the (Irish/American) culture of which she was now a part.

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