After the girl’s parents see Sophie, they forbid her grandmother to live with them, and the woman moves to John’s mother. The latter, in turn, requires the granddaughter to leave the shelter and pokes a stick at her several times. When Sophie learns from another boy that she can beat adults, she hides and throws dirt at her grandmother. The situation in the park is a key event that leads to a denouement. In addition, the woman is not happy with the upbringing methods maintained in the family of her daughter and son-in-law, which is also a reason for disagreements.
Grandmother’s displeasure is that, according to her vision, Sophie is a “wild” child and does not match the appearance of a Chinese girl (Jen 1999, 3).
One of the main issues raised in the story is the indignation of the older woman by the behavior of her granddaughter who “is not like my daughter Natalie, or like me” (Jen 1999, 3). The woman has a Chinese daughter and John, the son-in-law, who is Irish. The narration is on behalf of an older Chinese woman who lives in New York, and the main emphasis is on Sophie, the narrator’s granddaughter. This short story introduces several key characters and some situations from their lives. The principles of upbringing and relations among the characters prove that cultural differences and a distinctive background complicate communication and create obstacles to maintaining a positive microclimate. As an object of analysis, the story “Who’s Irish” by Gish Jen will be reviewed in which the author describes situations that occur in an ethnically diverse family. Mona has the buttonholing narrator, the rollicking comedy that modulates into genuine sadness, and the incidental but all-important details that might confuse those intent on the author's ethnicity but will delight everyone else.The cultural and ethical aspects of human communication are often revealed by Asian authors in literary works. As for Gish Jen, she turns out to be a descendant of Laurence Sterne. They call each other brother, and eat soul food instead of subs, and wear their hair in the baddest Afros they can manage." The divide between past conservatism and present bohemia is one of the novel's concerns, but its epigraphs hint at the porous nature of cultural identity, of groups taking what they choose from one another. She does, however admit to knowing "some kids studying to be Bobby Seale. While Mona's parents worry about what she'll do next-her mother suggesting at one point that she might even want to be black, Mona ripostes that that's not a religion. In Gish Jen's hands, '70s suburbia is a place of buoyant hope and change. Her equally Jewish Westchester classmates hardly notice what everyone else finds hard to forget: Mona may be Jewish by choice (and voice) and American by nationality, but her surname is Chang and so she is considered less an expert on seders and schmaltz than China. Mona-a self-described "self-made mouth" goes to temple, loves pickles, is boy-crazy, worries about getting into the right college and keeping up with her over-achieving sister, and wishes her parents were less strict. The heroine of Mona in the Promised Land is a true child of the suburbs.
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