Who's Irish Bio

Gish Jen Biography

Ben Grossman, Max Kaufman, and Skylar Mays

    Born Lillian Jen in 1955, she is a second generation Chinese American. Her parents emigrated to the States in the 1940s. She grew up in New York, mainly in Long Island, Queens, and Yonkers. Now the author of four novels, a collection of short stories and a volume of lectures, she has posted in The Best American Short Stories of 1988, 1995 and 2013, as well as The Best American Short Stories of the Century, edited by John Updike. She is widely taught and has been nominated for and has won numerous book awards.

    The following was said in a Q and A with her:

Q: Does that mean you write about the immigrant experience?

A: It means that I write about but also out of the immigrant experience.I grew up, not just with a desire to tell my own story, or my family’s story, but fascinated in general by culture and cultural change – by ways of seeing and speaking, and not seeing and not speaking, by family making and unmaking.

Her stories focus around issues of culture and identity. They depict individuals, families, and communities that struggle to answer questions of race, religion, and change. She writes about the adaptation to American culture.

Here is a link to a short interview of Jen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLi08sq6qtM

Questions:

1. How is the grandmother’s culture different from her daughter’s?
2. In what ways is the grandmother struggling to fit the cultural model imposed on her?
3. How would the story be different if the narrator was a male?

Jen, Gish.”Gish.”GishJen. N.p., n.d. Web.20 Oct. 2015

“Gish Jen.” Blue Flower Arts Rss. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Oct. 2015