Who’s Chinese American?
Gish Jen adds a new dimension to APA literature
By Calvin Liu

My own experience is actually pedestrous,” says 42-year-old author Gish Jen. “I’m a housewife; I’m a mother ... How much can [I] have lived?”

Jen’s readers, however, might beg to differ. Despite this humble demeanor, her literary career is anything but ordinary. The author of two New York Times notable books of the year -- Typical American (1991) and Mona in the Promised Land (1996) -- Jen has come to the forefront of contemporary Asian American literature. But even as her stories focus on the Asian immigrant experience -- particularly the intergenerational culture clashes -- Jen’s narrative charm transcends anything considerably “Asian American.”

A second-generation Chinese American, Jen realizes she will always be categorized at face value. But despite these limitations, Jen is obviously not concerned with such intra-ethnic categorization -- even though she is constantly reminded by book reviewers of this hyphenated cultural experience. (Yes, she candidly admits to reading her reviews, and upon finishing, she says she often thinks, “That’s kind of true -- I’ll have to remember that about myself.”)

Now, Jen offers Who’s Irish?, a collection of eight short stories, including Birthmates, which was handpicked by John Updike for the anthology, Best American Short Stories of the Century.

Birthmates itself is a gem. We are presented with Art Woo, an outdated, tragically compassionate Chinese American businessman whose only insight -- immasculate at best -- drifts among past failures. This protagonist’s idea of being confident is his decision “to have a full American breakfast with bacon and eggs, none of this continental bullshit.” (Shortly after this pitiful triumph, he finds he’s mistakenly checked into a welfare hotel.)

Despite her focus on Asian American characters, the issues that Jen confronts are significant to Asian Americans in varying degrees. She maintains that her intention is never to reflect any certain ethnic experience, though she admits that her heritage and her writing are unconsciously inseparable.

“The initial impetus for a piece is mysterious to me ... I think that, in terms of locating the story, it’s simply a matter of feel,” Jen says. “But in terms of telling the story, that’s conscious.” She stresses, though, that she doesn’t think to herself, “Now I’m going to write something about racism.”

And when it comes to her characters -- many of whom might seem all too familiar to Asian American readers -- Jen says her accounts are purely fictional. For example, the narrator of Jen’s title piece, Who’s Irish?, is a first-generation Chinese immigrant mother whose daughter is married to an unemployed Irish American.

In particular, the narrator’s unrelentingly dry sarcasm may be an honest ambush on readers who are children of Chinese immigrants: “Of course, I understand I am just lucky, come from a country where the food is popular all over the world. I understand it is not the Shea family’s fault they come from a country where everything is boiled ... Maybe because I grew up with black bean sauce and hoisin sauce and garlic sauce, I always feel something is missing when my son-in-law talk.”

But even as the mother’s clever (some might say ignorant) criticism may appear to be an extrapolation from Jen’s experiences with her own immigrant mother, the author says her characters are not necessarily inspired by individuals she knows

“First of all -- the way I deal with it -- I don’t write about my family [but] people inevitably think it is my family,” Jen says. “I understand it’s not just me -- this is the condition of fiction writers in general. ... There’s a way in which people who don’t write fiction [find] that’s the explanation that’s most accessible.

“I don’t borrow my elbows and knees from my family, but from everybody. ... If a year from [now] something you said would kind of stay with me, I would know that it’s important to me, and it may end up somewhere in a story ... [But] most people’s lives are very boring -- they don’t make good fiction.”

While her characters are not necessarily afforded a singularly Asian American viewpoint, Jen says that her Chinese heritage is inseparable from the way she perceives the creative process itself.

As such, she finds herself struggling with the Asian-oriented criticism that artistic and literary endeavors are selfish in nature.

“I’ve noticed that other writers -- non-Asian writers -- sort of take [the creative process] for granted. This is what they want to do, and if it inconveniences people around them, too bad,” Jen says. On the other hand, Chinese Americans “think twice about burdening their family ... I think I struggle with that stuff much more than other people struggle with it ... That’s probably very Asian.”