"And sure enough, train wreck."

First thing's first: did anyone actually dig a foxhole when they were three years-old? I had never heard of anyone doing that, but it is hilarious. When I was three years-old, I barely had the patience to wait my turn at a slide, let alone dig a foxhole and lay in ambush for my mother to come by. Would I have even been able to pick up a shovel? Needless to say, Sophie is a very unique girl – but I guess that’s the point, isn’t it?

“Sophie is wild,” says the grandmother/narrator of Gish Jen’s “Who’s Irish?” (176). She is certainly that. Along with “wild,” she is also “difficult,” “creative,” “a problem,” “not afraid,” “stubborn,” “brown,” (177-184) and unlike any other girl in China. This is quite a list for someone who has only been around for three years! It’s important to notice, though, that she hasn’t described herself in any of these ways. She is something different to everyone around her, but I think that most of the descriptors can be boiled down into two categories: “Different” and “Unique.”

Both share roughly the same meaning, but it’s the connotation that matters. This is how the story can relate to the overall theme of Asian Americans – most of the time it is a matter of perspective. Jin Wang and the Monkey King from Gene Yang’s “American Born Chinese” both went through phases in which they saw themselves (and were seen as) “different,” in a negative way. Only after a transformative experience did they realize that they were “unique” in ways that they can be proud of. Gish Jen’s short story, “Who’s Irish?” puts a spin on this by placing the reader in an outside perspective. Sophie is in the same place the Monkey King was, but we are now looking through the eyes of the other Chinese gods.

That in mind, it’s interesting to see how complicated the situation can become. The narrator (Sophie’s grandmother) is prejudiced against Sophie not because she is unlike other Americans, but because she is unlike other Chinese girls. “Nothing the matter with Sophie’s outside, that’s the truth” she says, “It is inside that she is not like any Chinese girl I ever see,” (180). Unlike Jin and the Monkey King, Sophie’s outward appearance is not her primary obstacle (though it is discussed). The grandmother sees the true conflict within, “… there is more trouble with Sophie […] I think I can help her Chinese side fight against her wild side” (182). The grandmother wants to be the one who transforms Sophie. Almost all of her family has some wish to change her in one way or another, be it through making her less rambunctious, more familiar or less “brown.” It is as if they don’t know how to handle Sophie otherwise. This leads me to think that a lot of prejudice against a person who is foreign in some way stems from the problem of being unsure of how to interact with them. Jin’s classmates didn’t know how to properly interact with someone who was foreign to them, so they resorted to insults. Sophie’s distinctiveness causes a lot of debate on how she should be treated – should she be “normalized,” and if so, in what way? It is a nearly impossible decision to make for someone else.

A character like Sophie is hard to describe succinctly. She is hard to describe for people around her and, eventually, may struggle to describe herself. Allow me to offer up a suggestion. I read about a lot of things that Sophie “is,” but how did people overlook “good foxhole digger”? Seriously. She dug a hole so deep that you couldn’t see her. She even fell asleep down there! “Who’s Irish”? More like, “Who’s Amazing with a Shovel at Age Three?”