Who's Irish?

Who’s Irish? Is a witty and relatable story of two different cultures having a common bond of a little girl, Sophie. The characters of this short story are individuals that constitute the narrators outcome. The grandmother, who is this sixty-eight year old Chinese born widow is a fierce, traditional and broken English spoken woman of certain beliefs.  Her daughter Natalie, is a Chinese-American woman who like her mother is fierce is married to John Shea, a depressed, out of work man of Irish decent.  Both Natalie and John have a three year old little girl, Sophie.  Sophie is a smart, wild and stubborn little girl that doesn’t want to listen to anyone.  Along with this happy little family is Bess.  Bess is John’s mother, a quiet and peaceful woman that needs female company and gets along with her the other grandmother.

The point of view of this story is told through the grandmother.  The grandmother’s disregard for the Irish is constant obstacle that she faces throughout the story.  She finds that Sophie is too wild and is not “a Chinese girl I ever see”  Sophie’s wild streak of taking off her clothes at the park, kicking other mothers and blatantly disobeying her grandmother is a shock and thinks that it stems from Sophie’s other decent of being Irish.

 As the story unfolds, the grandmother baby sits Sophie everyday and takes her to the park.  At the park is where Sophie’s wild side shows.  As her grandmother notices her ripping off her clothes she confronts Natalie and tells her that she should discipline her with a light spanking so she will never do it again.  Naturally Natalie disagrees and tells her not to spank Sophie ever.  As trips to the park continue so doesn’t the stripping.  The grandmother then takes matters into her own hands and begins spanking Sophie lightly every time she disobeys her grandmother.  With this Sophie is scarred and disobeys her loving grandmother for the last time.  At the park a following time, Sophie mimics a little boy named Sinbad.  He digs holes, climes in them and there he throws piles of wet sand and his mother.  One day Sophie climbed into the foxhole that was dug out and waited for her grandmother to call for her.  With that, she threw a huge wet pile of sand on her clean clothes.  The grandmother then screams for her and begins poking her with a stick to get her out of the hole.  Hours pass and John and Natalie arrive.  There they see the grandmother poking Sophie in the hole.  John pulls out a sleepy, bruised and battered three year old out of the hole.  In the car Sophie tells her parents that grandma spanks her all the time.  With that both parents are furious and distinctly remember telling her never to spank Sophie.  Due to all this Natalie never brings Sophie to visit her grandmother anymore.  

Unfortunatally both John and Natalie witness the grandmother poking Sophie with a stick and become furious and distinctly remember telling her never to hit Sophie.  Later on the grandmother moves in with Bess because she is alone and doesn’t have anyone else to take care of so for some female companionship she moves in with Bess.  At Bess’s home they watch t.v. and the bird feeder.