Who's Irish?

“Who’s Irish?” is told in first-person narration by the Chinese grandmother of a Chinese and Irish American granddaughter, Sophie, for whom the narrator has become a “live-in babysitter.” The story starts with the grandmother commenting on how the Irish side of Sophie’s heritage has caused her to become a poorly behaved child. The grandmother makes many comments about the Irish American family that her daughter, Natalie, has married into. She is especially confused by why so many of her son-in law’s siblings do not work and are on welfare: “Why the Shea family have so much trouble? They are white people, they speak English?” (4). The grandmother is especially concerned that Natalie supports her husband, who is also out of work: “If John lived in China, he would be very happy” (5). John is said to be out of work because he is depressed.

When the grandmother attempts to parent Sophie in the way she parented her own children, she causes tension with Natalie and John, especially when she suggests corporal punishment as a solution. At the story’s climax, the narrator cannot get Sophie out of a hole in the playground, where she has fallen asleep, and repeatedly pokes her with a stick. Sophie tells her parents that her grandmother is hitting her all the time, which is not true—despite the bruises on her body, which are from her grandmother’s attempts to free her from the hole at the park—but Natalie feels she needs to find a new place for her mother to live in order to save her marriage. The grandmother moves in with John’s mother, Bess. Bess complicates the grandmother’s narrative of this Irish family as the grandmother admires the way Bess has a voice in her family, one that her children listen to.