Who's Irish? — Gish Jen

In this winning collection of short stories by the author of the highly acclaimed novels Typical American and Mona in the Promised Land, the children of immigrants look wonderingly at their parents' efforts to assimilate even as they realize the extent to which this uneasy enterprise has made their own choices possible. Meanwhile, the older generation -- as exemplified in the hilariously poignant title story -- ask how so much selfless hard work can have yielded them children who'd prefer to make art than money, who'd sooner drop out of life than succeed at it.

With dazzling wit and compassion, Gish Jen looks at ambition and compromise at century's end and finds that much of the action is as familiar and as strange as the things we know to be most deeply true about ourselves.