SOURCE: Zierler, Wendy. “Laughter with a Twist.” Far Eastern Economic Review 163, no. 5 (3 February 2000): 36-7.

In the following review, Zierler asserts that the stories in Who's Irish? demonstrate Jen's best writing to date. Zierler observes that Jen is at her best when in the tragic-comic mode.

Gish Jen is at her best when she is funny and serious at the same time. And she is at her best in this new collection of stories about the Chinese-American experience.

Who's Irish in this book? Not the immigrant Chinese mother who narrates the title story, but her perennially unemployed son-in-law, allowing for some hilarious observations on the merits of one hyphenated American identity over another. “I understand,” she concedes, “I am just lucky, to 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...