Summary of Gish Jen's Who's Irish Essay

The main conflict of this novel is revealed in the synopsis on the back cover. The main character,

The book, “The Irish Way” by James R. Barrett is a masterpiece written to describe the life of Irish immigrants who went to start new lives in America after conditions at home became un-accommodative. Widespread insecurity, callous English colonizers and the ghost of great famine still lingering on and on in their lives, made this ethnic group be convinced that home was longer a home anymore. They descended in United States of America in large numbers. James R. Barrett in his book notes that these people were the first group of immigrants to settle in America. According to him, there were a number of several ethnic groups that have arrived in America. It was, however, the mass exodus of Irish people during and after the great

Who were the Molly Maguires? Did they really exist? These are questions asked by many people today. Some historians wonder if the Molly Maguires really did bring their secret society from England to the United States, or if the incidents blamed on them were just random accidents on which officials needed to place a blame. We may never actually know...

People of many different nationalities settled in Pennsylvania to work in the coal mines. Conflicts developed not only among people of different cultural backgrounds but also between laborers and owners of the mines. The struggle between labor and management is illustrated in the story of the Molly Maguires, an Irish group which settled in eastern Pennsylvania.

the inner conflict of Connie, the protagonist of the book. The source of that struggle is her

Chinese-Americans authors Amy Tan and Gish Jen have both grappled with the idea of mixed identity in America. For them, a generational problem develops over time, and cultural displacement occurs as family lines expand. While this is not the problem in and of itself, indeed, it is natural for current culture to gain foothold over distant culture, it serves as the backdrop for the disorientation that occurs between generations. In their novels, Tan and Jen pinpoint the cause of this unbalance in the active dismissal of Chinese mothers by their Chinese-American children.

She critically describes the country and its society as being a bad place through her use of constant personification, and she talks in a monolog to the country, almost as if it were a person: “You big awful.” She expresses her disappointment with how she was treated when she first arrived – “When I came this woman gave me a box of biscuits. You try to be friendly but you´re not very friendly.”

Q: A conflict is a struggle between opposing forces and can be external (against an outside force) or internal (within a character’s mind.) What conflict(s) does Mrs. Chen experience? What is the outcome of these conflicts?

In “Who’s Irish”, Gish Jen demonstrates a family that has Chinese root and American culture at the same time. The main character is a fierce grandmother who lives in with her daughter’s family, and then ironically forced to move out because of her improper behavior during she raises her granddaughter. The author uses some unpleasant language and contents to describe the situation, which are effectively demonstrate how difficult and how struggle for people who lives in the gap between two different cultures. I can’t say who is right or who is wrong, but feel sorry for the grandmother.

How did Irish Immigrants culture and way of lifestyle affect the economy? Without these conflicts we would still have bad discrimination today. “What makes someone American isn’t just blood or birth but allegiance to our founding principles and faith in the idea that anyone-from anywhere-can write the next chapter of our story.” –Barack Obama

William Butler Yeats is one of the most esteemed poets in 20th century literature and is well known for his Irish poetry. While Yeats was born in Ireland, he spent most of his adolescent years in London with his family. It wasn’t until he was a teenager that he later moved back to Ireland. He attended the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin and joined the Theosophical Society soon after moving back. He was surrounded by Irish influences most of his life, but it was his commitment to those influences and his heritage that truly affected his poetry. William Butler Yeats’s poetry exemplifies how an author’s Irish identity can help create and influence his work.

As the reader followed that plot of the novel, the main conflict is the person versus person, or the killing of each individual house guest against the

Amy Tan’s short story “Two Kinds” describes a Chinese immigrant family who hope of finding success and an overall betterment of life in America. After losing everything in China, Jing-mei’s mother, Mrs. Woo, tries as a minority house maid in the 1960s to provide all the opportunities she can for her last daughter. This short story revolves around the interactions between the Jing-mei, who desires a ordinary life, and Mrs. Woo, who seeks only the best from her daughter. The values of these two characters are in constant conflict of which creates a lasting segregation between parent and child. Through Mrs. Woo’s death, Jing-mei questions her childhood upbringing and her mother’s true intentions that were masked by pure immigrant ambition.

One of the critics who discuss Johnston’s work is Laila Khan. In her essay, “Domestic Unrest and Jennifer Johnston’s Fiction of the Irish Trouble,” Khan focuses on how Johnston’s novels do not concentrate on the violence happening in the nation, but instead how she “uses Irish domestic fictions to explored alternative approaches to friendships and family bonds that could exist when women reject nationalist narratives” (2). Khan’s essay analyzes these trends in relationship to the mothers in Johnston’s The Railway Station Man and Shadows on Our Skin. While women often are representative of Ireland in Irish fictions, Khan notes that Johnston purposely creates mothers that “refuses to act as mouthpieces for national rhetoric in the home, choosing instead passivity or alternative kinships as what they see as the only escape” (3). An example of this from Shadows on Our Skin is the way the Mrs. Logan “has sent her eldest son Brendon off to England in hopes of keeping him safe” (3). According to Khan, the purpose of this is to keep him away from “his pro-Nationalist father, [and] also out of the Irish public sphere” (3). In The Railway Station Man, Helen “is less interested in protesting political involvement than she is in escaping it entirely (6). It is because of this that Helen is unlike many mother, she does not “force her son to owe her anything” (9). This analysis differs from the one that will be examined in this paper because, while the mother is an important figure, she

The short stories of Ireland are distinct and many times distinctly Irish. “The Limerick Gloves” by Maria Edgeworth, “The Pedlar’s Revenge” by Liam O’Flaherty, “The Poteen Maker” by Michael McLaverty, and “Loser” Val Mulkerns are each distinct Irish short stories that deal with Irish topics in original ways. These stories are stylistically and thematically Irish. They are moralistic and offer clear themes that pertain to Irish values. This analysis will explore the Irish-ness of the works and explore their meaning when held against Irish literary tenants.