Who's Irish?

“This is not so easy, now that I am sixty-eight, Chinese age almost seventy. Still I try. In China, daughter take care of mother. Here it is the other way around.” 

In this collection’s first story, Jen introduces the conflicts between generational expectations in immigrant families. The narrator, a grandmother, essentially occupies the role of babysitter for her granddaughter—a role that runs counter to her own cultural expectations.

“My daughter thought this Amy very creative—another word we don’t talk about in China. In China, we talk about whether we have difficulty or no difficulty.” 

In this passage the narrator is talking about her granddaughter’s previous babysitter, Amy, whom the mother faults for some of Sophie’s behavioral problems. This comment is another instance of miscommunication as the daughter has adopted an American value of being “creative” that the mother is not familiar with and therefore cannot understand.

“Use your words, my daughter say.” 

This moment foreshadows the climax of the story, when the narrator is forced to leave her daughter's house for using a stick and not her “words” (which would have been impossible with her sleeping granddaughter) to get Sophie out of the hole at the playground. It also brings up a theme found throughout the collection: how often language is not enough to bridge the gaps people have in their understanding of one another.