"Sparkling...a gently satiric look at the American Dream and its fallout on those who pursue it."—The New York Times

With dazzling wit and compassion, Gish Jen—author of the highly acclaimed novels Typical American and Mona in the Promised Land—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.

The stories in Who's Irish? show us the children of immigrants looking wonderingly at their parents' efforts to assimilate, while the older generation asks how so much selfless hard work on their part can have yielded them offspring who'd sooner drop out of life than succeed at it.

"Jen's gift is for comedy that resonates, and sadnesses that arise with perfect timing from absurdities. Her subject matter is so appealing, it almost obscures the power and suppleness of her language."—The New York Times Book Review

"Gish Jen's fiction is always engaging, always necessary."—Newsday