In the short story “Who’s Irish?” by Gish Jen, a multicultural family with Chinese-American and Irish backgrounds struggles to accommodate different parenting styles. The Chinese immigrant grandmother narrates how she enforces corporal punishment on her granddaughter Sophie and gets rejected by her daughter Natalie to live with them. Jen uses first-person POV to highlight Grandma’s struggle and uses dialogue at the same time to express the daughter’s ambivalent feelings towards her mother, demonstrating the difficulty and broken relationship that cultural and generational differences bring to a family. 

Jen narrates in first person point of view to communicate the grandmother’s internal feelings, which centers the old generation’s voice and implies the presence of ageism. When Grandma finds Sophie in the park and gets thrown with dirt, she claims, “I am not exaggerate: millions of children in China, not one act like this.”(Jen 12) Jen effectively expresses Grandma’s shock at Sophie’s wild actions and dissatisfaction with her not behaving like a Chinese child. Having lived her whole life with the tradition of treating children’s naughty behaviors with corporal punishment, it is not to blame Grandma that she instinctively compares Sophie with a normal Chinese kid and finds spanking the best way to teach her. However, what seems to be the most logical to her is never accepted by her daughter, who is from the younger generation and practices the American parenting style. The first-person POV enables readers to hear the inner voice of Grandma, which shows how old people judge things with their long-lasted traditional values and often be denied by young people without consideration. In addition, the narration in first-person POV highlights how ageism from families can hurt old people’s feelings. When the grandma gets kicked out of the house, she recalls: “A daughter I have, a beautiful daughter. I took care of her when she could not hold her head up. … When my husband die, I promise him I will keep the family together, even though it was just two of us, hardly a family at all”(Jen 14). The warm memories the grandmother recalls show her deep love for her daughter and the responsibility she carries to take care of the small family. It is hard for her not to help her daughter educate Sophie with the method she thinks is right when she has so much care for her family. The first-person POV enables readers to understand more of the character; the grandmother, after all, wants to hold the family together and doesn’t intend to hurt anyone. However, Nathalie only sees the old and obstinate side of Grandma, dismisses her efforts to help, and separates Grandma from her life. The underlying ageism that made her daughter distrust her hurts Grandma deep in her heart. The use of first-person POV provides a constantly ignored view of the old people’s feelings and thinking, implying that they should be valued.

Jen uses dialogue to display the frustrating dilemma Nathalie faces when cultural differences and discord in the family rise to the peak. We can see through Nathalie’s talks that she makes an effort to communicate with Grandma and protect her daughter without being disrespectful. When Grandma gets irritated because her suggestion of corporal punishment is strongly refuted, Nathalie explains: “I’m not telling you what to do, say my daughter. I’m telling you how I feel.”(Jen 9)  Nathalie’s way of talking shows her hope for Grandma to understand her way of parenting and that she doesn’t mean to hurt Grandma with words even if she disagrees with her behavior. We can see how she tries to protect Sophie from Grandma’s spanking and to maintain a nice relationship with her mother at the same time. The dialogue demonstrates her love for Grandma which embodies how irresolvable cultural differences can hurt each other despite their effort to be considerate. Besides, Jen employs dialogue to express Nathalie’s stress and frustration from the failure to reach a consensus with Grandma. The generational gap between their notions of raising children is so large that Grandma’s behavior is intolerable to the young couple. When they see Sophie hurt from Grandma’s stick back from the park and that no communication has worked with Grandma, they decide: “Your family, say John. Believe me, say my daughter.”(Jen 14) The words from John express his dissatisfaction with Grandma and put pressure on Nathalie. On one hand, she doesn’t want to divorce or let Sophie be hurt; on the other hand, she loves her mother and doesn’t want to let her be alienated. The dialogue displays the dilemma Nathalie faces; cultural difference forces her to choose one side of her family and will inevitably hurt the other. A better understanding of Nathalie’s view reveals the idea that as though the powerful role seems to be aggressive, they make decisions with an effort to cause less harm to the family.

Jen combines first-person POV and dialogue to display how cultural differences have caused involuntary conflicts and separation between Grandma and Nathalie. The dialogue balances with the first-person narrative, which provides different perspectives developing them into round characters and conveys the idea of embracing both young and old thoughts. Jen builds her theme of how ageism appears in families with cultural and generational differences and can cause discord in families that hurts everyone. When old people hold their opinions with traditional values, they shouldn’t be dismissed by the young generation even if they don’t have the same eyesight, because their voice should also be valued.