| Title | : | Whos Irish? (Electric Literatures Recommended Reading Book 278) |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Format Type | : | Kindle Edition |
| Number of Pages | : | 28 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1999 |
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About the Guest Editor: Celeste Ng’s latest novel, Little Fires Everywhere, was recently published by Penguin Press. Ng grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Shaker Heights, Ohio. She attended Harvard University and earned an MFA from the University of Michigan. Her debut novel, Everything I Never Told You, won the Hopwood Award, the Massachusetts Book Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature and the ALA’s Alex Award and is a 2016 NEA fellow. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. To learn more about her and her work, visit her website at celesteng.com or follow her on Twitter: @pronounced_ing.
About the Author: The author of six previous books, Jen has published short work in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, and dozens of other periodicals and anthologies. Her work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories four times, including The Best American Short Stories of the Century, edited by John Updike. Nominated for a National Book Critics’ Circle Award, her work was featured in a PBS American Masters’ special on the American novel, and is widely taught.
Jen is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has been awarded a Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, a Guggenheim fellowship, a Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study fellowship, and numerous other awards. An American Academy of Arts and Letters jury comprised of John Updike, Cynthia Ozick, Don DeLillo, and Joyce Carol Oates granted her a five-year Mildred and Harold Strauss Living award; Jen delivered the William E. Massey, Sr. Lectures in the History of American Civilization at Harvard University in 2012. Her most recent book is The Girl at the Baggage Claim: Explaining the East-West Culture Gap.
About the Publisher: Electric Literature is an independent publisher amplifying the power of storytelling through digital innovation. Electric Literature’s weekly fiction magazine, Recommended Reading, invites established authors, indie presses, and literary magazines to recommended great fiction. Once a month we feature our own recommendation of original, previously unpublished fiction. Recommended Reading is supported by the Amazon Literary Partnership, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. For other links from Electric Literature, follow us, or sign up for our eNewsletter.
Whos Irish? (Electric Literatures Recommended Reading Book 278) Reviews
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En “Residente permanente” Gish Jen nos presenta un total de ocho relatos, todos ellos centrados en americanos de origen o ascendencia china y lo que ha implicado para ellos el que sus padres hubieran emigrado a Estados Unidos persiguiendo el sueño americano. No todo es fácil, no todo es sencillo, y la mayoría encuentra pocas posibilidades profesionales, un racismo adherido firmemente a todas las ramas de la sociedad y un tremendo choque cultural entre los que tienen muy presente su cultura y los familiares que ya nacieron en América y no reconocen esta como propia.
El choque entre culturas es un tema que siempre me llama, me atrae mucho ese encuentro entre diferentes países, ese golpe que se dan esas personas que se encuentran entre ambas culturas, siendo mitad una cosa mitad la otra, pero sin sentirse parte de ninguna en su totalidad. Como digo, es un tema que me interesa siempre y que disfruto mucho, por eso cuando descubrí este libro que presentaba un grupo de relatos donde nos introducía a personas con diferentes circunstancias, pero que compartían esta lucha por sentirse parte de algo y por escapar de ese racismo que terminan por normalizar, me propuse leerlo de un tirón.
Finalmente la experiencia ha sido bastante agridulce. Si bien es cierto que la autora usa el humor para representar infinidad de situaciones donde ese racismo tan interiorizado se deja ver, a través de comentarios, de actitudes, de discriminaciones a nivel laboral o personal, y lo absurdo de estas situaciones consiguen sacarte alguna carcajada. También creo que el primer relato, que me gustó bastante y consigue hacer un retrato bastante ridículo del discurso de estas personas que miran al que no es igual que ellas como si fuera inferior, es el único que me ha gustado realmente. En el resto encontré historias bastantes dispersas, que no terminaban de decirme mucho, y que pese a alguna que otra escena que me parecía acertada o que denunciaba algo, me llegaron a parecer incluso aburridos.
Pese a que todos los relatitos son bastante cortos, el último tiene unas ochenta páginas, bastante largo teniendo en cuenta que el libro consta de menos de doscientas cincuenta páginas para ocho historias, y para colmo es el que menos me ha gustado de todos y se me ha hecho soporífero. Normalmente no suelo tomar la iniciativa de abandonar libros, es algo que me pasa poco y menos en cuanto a literatura asiática, pero si no llega a ser así de corto, este libro no lo hubiera terminado.
En definitiva, es un libro con ideas interesantes, que tiene un primer relato que cumple muy bien y que pese a que el resto se me han quedado bastante insustanciales, hay alguna que otra escena bastante lograda y digna de analizar en cuanto a crítica social, pero nunca termina de ser contundente. Es una lectura que me ha descolocado, porque a veces parecía ser “demasiado americano” pese a estar criticando precisamente la pérdida de estas raíces, como producto del racismo y el desapego. No sé, no me ha terminado de cuadrar. Quizás no he terminado de pillarle todo lo que quería transmitir. Una lástima. -
The title story is a gem
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What a great collection of stories. I picked this up after reading a
Samantha Lan Chang interview where she cites Gish as a similar author. Gish has a wonderful roughness to her writing, a deadpan humor that eases the harshness of the stories. While I wouldn't necessarily compare these stories with Chang's, I'm eager to pick up a novel.
House, House, Home, the last story in the book, really got into the question of voluntary exclusion. Juxtaposing an eccentric and affluent art professor with Pammie, a child of immigrant parents who was raised poor and with struggle, told a bigger story of how we ascribe ourselves to an identify just as much as we rebel against that which we came from. -
4.5! thoroughly enjoyed the titular story
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Loved the title story, but others were good too.
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Dazzling. Eight short stories focused essentially on the Chinese experience in America, with one on the (Chinese-) American experience in China. (The title, stemming from a Chinese woman's view of the Irish-American family her daughter married into, is misleading.) Expertly articulated; Jen has a gift for rendering tiny details with exquisite flair in her depictions of foreignness and alienation.
The final story, House, House, Home, flips the script, with the protagonist getting a new perspective on foreignness from a Hawaiian man she falls for.
Not by design, but I happen to not read many, or enough, female authors. Who's Irish offers a very unique, and feminine, perspective on every page, and I loved it. -
Lord this was boring. First of all, it's short stories, which I tend to disklike b/c I want more from my characters and time. Secondly, the short stories were too short!! haha. And, really it was almost like they were trying too hard to be quirky or something. I just really thoroughly did not enjoy reading this. The only reason I did was b/c my Italian mother-in-law gave it to me as a joke for Christmas, as the new solo Irish girl in the family. Here was the rub -- it's about Asians, not Irishmen, HAHA, the joke is on me!!!
So I don't recommend this on any level. -
Love me some Gish Jen. Her writing is compassionate, whip-smart, and always a delight to read. I didn't actually find most of these stories to be nearly as good as her novels, and there are definitely several duds in this collection ("Duncan in China" in particular is kind of a snoozer) but still definitely worth a read.
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Well-written stories with a wry sense of humor. But if I never read another story about a young woman tumbling for her much older professor, and how that relationship surprisingly doesn't work out very well, that will be okay. (It's still a good story.)
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It takes a lot of talent to weave stories involving the same characters through a series of books and short stories. Gish Jen is a master at this. I read the more recent books first, and now find myself looking eagerly for the appearance of a familiar character in the earlier short stories.
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Rating is for “Who’s Irish?”
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"If you've never felt even a pang of yearning about acceptance, you are not really an outsider, she maintained. Your brand of alienation is romantic and sentimental, and I resent it."
This quote pulled from the last story, "House, House, Home" aptly sums up the theme of the entirety of the collection for me. From the first story about a Chinese grandmother with differing child-rearing ideals from her daughter and son-in-law, to the middle story about a man who, aimless in the United States, travels to China and discovers it was not what he expected. These short stories are smart and layered, with interestingly developed characters throughout. The stories explore marriage, old age, Chinese and biracial identity, and many other, always relevant themes.
I enjoyed the book. Admittedly, I tried reading it quite some time ago and, though I was having a good time even then, I stopped and did not return to again until now. So much time had passed that I forgot all but one of the stories, so it was as if I was reading it for the first time. I was surprised by the length of two of the stories, but that may be because I am more used to anthologies than I am short story collections. The last story was the weakest, for me, but it was still pretty good. I don't have a favorite, because, overall, I really enjoyed all the stories about the same amount, except for the last. I don't know if I would re-read this in its entirety again, but there are definitely a few stories that I will refer to more than once in my life.
I think I need to re-evaluate my Goodreads rating system so, for now, I will leave this unrated, but it is definitely 3+ stars. -
I didn't realize when I picked this book up that it was short stories. Not my favorite read. As I always end up caring about the characters and then they are gone. Same is true here. The first story about the mother/grandmother was funny. Jen's prose took me right there and I could picture the scene and was giggling at the mother's thoughts of her son-in-law's family during a Thanksgiving dinner. Priceless. The second story tore at my heartstrings of a broken man who was afraid of everything after a divorce. Each story made me care about the central character and then....they were gone. On to the next. If you like a short story - perfect for reading on a commute train you could finish one a trip - I recommend this one. Well written.
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I only recently learned of Gish Jen and her work and am absolutely mesmerized. These stories follow the lives of different Asian-Americans—snapshots of an America that I think is much more deserving of representation in popular culture. The first story, “Who’s Irish?” is told from the perspective of a Chinese grandmother who tells a story about her half-Irish granddaughter.
In another story called “Duncan in China,” we follow a Chinese-American who travels to China to reconnect with his heritage and teach English—the story is amazing!
It’s such a great collection that I know I will be returning to these stories again. -
I really enjoyed this collection of stories. They were really thought provoking and despite the fact that they were short I found myself getting immersed in each of them. I would even think about them when I wasn't reading the book. A lot of them deal with issues of race, immigration, class, and identity, but there's also a lot about family and romantic relationships. Didn't expect to enjoy these as much as I did, but it was really worthwhile reading.
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Beautiful stories, but many of them promised more than they gave.
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This is the second book I've read by this author and I find myself so tickled by the way she uses words. These stories were delightful and thought-provoking.
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Who’s Irish? Gish Jen’s husband and Samuel Beckett. 10/10 book to read with Chris Doire, 7/10 without him
