Laughing in the Face of Cultural "Authenticity": Multiplicity, Melancholia, and Humor in Gish Jen's Who's Irish
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2017
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Haverford College. Department of English
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eng
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Abstract
This paper examines the cultural dislocation/relocation of the hyphenated space in the term “Chinese-American” by looking at humor in relation to themes of multiplicity, transition, and instability in Gish Jen’s collection of short stories, Who’s Irish? The paper situates the anthology within the larger cultural context of interpretations and representations of Chinese-American identity that compartmentalize these narratives into what critic Jeffrey Partridge terms a privatized “literary Chinatown.” I argue that Who’s Irish? de-privatizes the conventional Chinese-American narrative and instead functions within an alternate space of cultural production unique to the hybridized nature of the hyphenated identity, subverting what theorist Lisa Lowe describes as the “nativist/assimilationist” dialectic that characterizes Chinese-American literary tropes. I further argue that by using humor to draw attention to the ways in which characters perpetuate or transgress perceived cultural boundaries, Who’s Irish? challenges the idea of a cultural authenticity or essence and creates a more relational, expansive, and fluid notion of cultural identity. While the paper addresses the significance of the anthology’s ability to speak to both individual and collective experiences as a whole, it focuses specifically on the three short stories “Who’s Irish?,” “In the American Society,” and “Duncan in China” to demonstrate its argument that cultural identity should be understood relationally rather than as an absolute, and to highlight the role of humor in exposing and processing such moments of cultural essentialism.