Gish Jen

Gish Jen is a contemporary writer.

Literary output

Several of her short stories have been reprinted in ''The Best American Short Stories''. Her piece "Birthmates", was selected as one of ''The Best American Short Stories of The Century'' by John Updike. Her works include three novels, ''Typical American'', ''Mona in the Promised Land'', and ''The Love Wife''. She has also written a collection of short fiction, prompted by her marriage to an Irish-American.

Her first novel, ''Typical American'', attempts to redefine Americanness as a preoccupation with identity. "As soon as you ask yourself the question, "What does it mean to be Irish-American, Iranian-American, Greek-American, you are American," she has said.

Her second novel, ''Mona in the Promised Land'' concerns the invention of ethnicity. ''The Love Wife'', her most recent novel, portrays an Asian American family with interracial parents and both biological and adopted children as "the new American family." She asks the question "What is a family?" as a way of asking, "What is a nation?"

Jen steps outside of the “ethnic writer” role in the sense that she does not focus primarily on ethnicity, but instead challenges the reader to ask him/herself what it means to be an American. In the past, the only Asian American writers to receive acclaim by a majority white readership were authors who portrayed Asians as that readership expected . When other Asian American authors, such as Louis Chu , presented a more nuanced and complicated picture of Asian American life, their works were not read by a larger public. In contrast, Gish Jen, alongside other contemporary Asian American authors, has received acclaim from both Asian American communities and a more mainstream, often white readership.
Jen's work suggests an antithesis of this perception of Chinese Americans. While many of her protagonists are Chinese or of Chinese decent, her goal is not to educate readers about the foreign world of Chinese American culture, but instead to ask her audience to consider the changing face of American identity. While ethnicity is addressed in her work, it is by no means her primary topic of concern.

Jen's characters are complex individuals who undergo transformations not based on essential formulas of ethnic identity. They live lives that seek to go beyond societal boundaries, be it through conventional notions of family or what it means to be an “Asian American.” Breaking down the duality built into “Asian American” suggests that one cannot quantify each “half” as if identity were a chemical composition. Jen's writing is “post-ethnic” in that it goes beyond cultural constructions, moving in a direction that seeks to re-define what it means to be American.

Critical studies

#"Interethnic Relationships in Chang-rae Lee's ''Native Speaker'' and Gish Jen's ''Birthmates''." By: Brada-Williams, Noelle. pp. 18-25 IN: Goldblatt, Roy ; Nyman, Jopi ; Stotesbury, John A. ; Singh, Amritjit ; ''Close Encounters of an Other Kind: New Perspectives on Race, Ethnicity, and American Studies''. Joensuu, Finland: Faculty of Humanities, University of Joensuu; 2005. xv, 278 pp.
#"A Quartet of Voices in Recent American Literature." By: Burns, Gerald T.; ''Philippine American Studies Journal'', 1991; 3: 1-8.
#"Material Bodies and Performative Identities: Mona, Neil, and the Promised Land." By: Byers, Michele; ''Philip Roth Studies'', 2006 Fall; 2 : 102-20.
#"Disjuncture at Home: Mapping the Domestic Cartographies of Transnationalism in Gish Jen's ''The Love Wife''." By: Chen, Shu-ching; ''Tamkang Review: A Quarterly of Literary and Cultural Studies'', 2006 Winter; 37 : 1-32.
#"Literary Reading and Intercultural Learning-Understanding Ethnic American Fiction in the EFL-Classroom." By: Donnerstag, Jürgen; ''Amerikastudien/American Studies'', 1992; 37 : 595-611.
#"From Story to Novel and Back Again: Gish Jen's Developing Art of Short Fiction." By: Feddersen, R. C.. pp. 349-58 IN: Kaylor, Noel Harold, Jr. ; ''Creative and Critical Approaches to the Short Story''. Lewiston, NY: Mellen; 1997. v, 488 pp.
#"Gish Jen." By: Feddersen, R. C.. pp. 196-208 IN: Fallon, Erin ; Feddersen, R. C. ; Kurtzleben, James ; Lee, Maurice A. ; Rochette-Crawley, Susan ; Rohrberger, Mary ; ''A Reader's Companion to the Short Story in English''. Westport, CT: Greenwood, for Society for the Study of the Short Story; 2001. xxxiv, 432 pp.
#"Reinventing a Chinese American Women's Tradition in Gish Jen's ''Mona in the Promised Land''." By: Feng, Pin-chia; ''EurAmerica: A Journal of European and American Studies'', 2002 Dec; 32 : 675-704.
#"'Who's Jewish?':Some Asian-American Writers and the Jewish-American Literary Canon." By: Freedman, Jonathan; ''Michigan Quarterly Review'', 2003 Winter; 42 : 230-54.
#"Immigrant Dreams and Civic Promises: Testing Identity in Early Jewish American Literature and Gish Jen's ''Mona in the Promised Land''" By: Furman, Andrew; ''MELUS'', 2000 Spring; 25 : 209-26.
#"The Redefinition of the 'Typical Chinese' in Gish Jen's ''Typical American''." By: Huang, Betsy; ''Hitting Critical Mass: A Journal of Asian American Cultural Criticism'', 1997 Summer; 4 : 61-77.
#"'Cheap, On Sale, American Dream': Contemporary Asian American Women Writers' Responses to American Success Mythologies." By: Kafka, Phillipa. pp. 105-28 IN: Blazek, William ; Glenday, Michael K. ; ''American Mythologies: Essays on Contemporary Literature''. Liverpool, England: Liverpool UP; 2005. x, 305 pp.
#"Imagined Cities of China." By: Lee, A. Robert; ''Wasafiri: Journal of Caribbean, African, Asian and Associated Literatures and Film'', 1995 Autumn; 22: 25-30.
#"Imagined Cities of China: Timothy Mo's London, Sky Lee's Vancouver, Fae Mynenne Ng's San Francisco and Gish Gen's New York." By: Lee, A. Robert; ''Hitting Critical Mass: A Journal of Asian American Cultural Criticism'', 1996 Fall; 4 : 103-19.
#"About Gish Jen." By: Lee, Don; ''Ploughshares'', 2000 Fall; 26 : 217-22.
#"Failed Performances of the Nation in Gish Jen's ''Typical American''." By: Lee, Rachel. pp. 63-79 IN: Franklin, Cynthia ; Hsu, Ruth ; Kosanke, Suzanne ; ''Navigating Islands and Continents: Conversations and Contestations in and around the Pacific''. Honolulu, HI: College of Languages, Linguistics and Literature, University of Hawaii; 2000. xxx, 275 pp.
#"Gish Jen." By: Lee, Rachel. pp. 215-32 IN: Cheung, King-Kok ; ''Words Matter: Conversations with Asian American Writers''. Honolulu, HI: U of Hawaii P, with UCLA Asian American Studies Center; 2000. 402 pp.
#''The Americas of Asian American Literature: Gendered Fictions of Nation and Transnation'' By: Lee, Rachel C.. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP; 1999. xi, 205 pp.
#''The Americas of Asian-American Literature: Nationalism, Gender, and Sexuality in 'America Is in the Heart', Jen's 'Typical American', and 'Dogeaters''' By: Lee, Rachel C.; Dissertation Abstracts International, 1996 Feb; 56 : 3126A-27A. U of California, Los Angeles, 1995.
#"When the West Is One: Undoing and Re-Doing the Hegemony of U. S. Culture in Diasporic Writing by Chinese American Women." By: Lim, Shirley Geok-lin. pp. 129-38 IN: Atherton, John ; Bruyère, Claire ; ''Lire en Amérique''. Paris, France: Institut d'Etudes Anglophones, Université Paris VII-Denis Diderot; 1992. 172 pp.
#"Mona on the Phone: The Performative Body and Racial Identity in ''Mona in the Promised Land''." By: Lin, Erika T.; ''MELUS: The Journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States'', 2003 Summer; 28 : 47-57.
#"Cultural Cross-Dressing in ''Mona in the Promised Land''." By: Ling, Amy. pp. 227-36 IN: Davis, Rocío G. ; Ludwig, S?mi ; ''Asian American Literature in the International Context: Readings on Fiction, Poetry, and Performance''. Hamburg, Germany: Lit; 2002. 265 pp.
#"Rice Talk: Discoursing Asian American Literature." By: Lopez, Ferdinand M.; ''Unitas: A Quarterly for the Arts and Sciences'', 2003 Mar; 76 : 76-97.
#"American Exceptionalism and Multiculturalism: Myths and Realities." By: Madsen, Deborah L.. pp. 177-87 IN: Maeder, Beverly ; Representing Realities: Essays on American Literature, Art and Culture. Tübingen, Germany: Gunter Narr; 2003. 228 pp.
#"Artefact, Commodity, Fetish: The Aesthetic Turn in Chinese American Literary Study." By: Madsen, Deborah L.. pp. 185-97 IN: Wang, Jennie ; ''Querying the Genealogy: Comparative and Transnational Studies in Chinese American Literature''. Shanghai, China: Shanghai yi wen chu ban she; 2006. 557 pp.
#"''MELUS'' Interview: Gish Jen." By: Matsukawa, Yuko; ''MELUS'', 1993-1994 Winter; 18 : 111-20.
#"Gish Jen's ''Mona in the Promised Land''." By: Partridge, Jeffrey F. L.. pp. 215-32 IN: Parini, Jay ; ''American Writers: Classics, Volume II''. New York, NY: Scribner's; 2004. xiv, 336 pp.
#''Crossroads and Mirrors in New World Literature, 1814-1997: Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, Charles Chesnutt, and Gish Jen'' By: Poehlmann, Bess Lyons; Dissertation Abstracts International, Section A: The Humanities and Social Sciences, 2004 June; 64 : 4455. Brandeis U, 2004.
#"Affirmations: Speaking the Self into Being." By: Samarth, Manini; ''Parnassus: Poetry in Review'', 1992; 17 : 88-101.
#"Writing about the Things That Are Dangerous: A Conversation with Gish Jen." By: Satz, Martha; ''Southwest Review'', 1993 Winter; 78 : 132-40.
#"The Symbolic Triune of Gish Jen's ''Typical American''." By: Schaefer, Judith; ''Notes on Contemporary Literature'', 2003 Sept; 33 : 10-12.
#"Gish Jen ." By: Simal, Bego?a. pp. 142-54 IN: Madsen, Deborah L. ; ''Asian American Writers''. Detroit, MI: Gale; 2005. xxiv, 460 pp.
#"Gish Jen: 'The Book That Hormones Wrote.'" By: Smith, Wendy; ''Publishers Weekly'', June 7, 1999; 246 : 59-58.
#"Success Chinese American Style: Gish Jen's ''Typical American''." By: TuSmith, Bonnie; ''Proteus: A Journal of Ideas'', 1994 Fall; 11 : 21-26.
#"'An Identity Switch': A Critique of Multiculturalism in Gish Jen's ''Mona in the Promised Land''." By: Wang, Chih-ming. pp. 139-54 IN: Brada-Williams, Noelle ; Chow, Karen ; ''Crossing Oceans: Reconfiguring American Literary Studies in the Pacific Rim''. Hong Kong: Hong Kong UP; 2004. xiv, 200 pp.
#"'An Onstage Costume Change': Modernity and Immigrant Experience in Gish Jen's ''Typical American''." By: Wang, Chih-ming; ''NTU Studies in Language and Literature'', 2002 Dec; 11: 71-96.
#"Writing on the Slash: Experience, Identification, and Subjectivity in Gish Jen's Novels." By: Wang, Chih-ming; ''Sun Yat-sen Journal of Humanities'', 2001 Oct; 13: 103-17.
#"But What in the World Is an Asian American? Culture, Class and Invented Traditions in Gish Jen's ''Mona in the Promised Land''." By: Wong, Sau-Ling Cynthia; ''EurAmerica: A Journal of European and American Studies'', 2002 Dec; 32 : 641-74.
#"Academic Dissidentifications." By: Wu, Yung-Hsing; ''Profession'', 2004; 107-17.
#"Becoming Americans: Gish Jen's ''Typical American''." By: Xiaojing, Zhou. pp. 151-63 IN: Payant, Katherine B. ; Rose, Toby ; ''The Immigrant Experience in North American Literature: Carving Out a Niche.'' Westport, CT: Greenwood; 1999. xxvii, 190 pp.