An Ethnic Trump by Gish Jen narrates how a Chinese-American mother teaches her son about the involvement of racism. It is a personal essay about Gish Jen’s experience as the mother of a child that is biracial. Jen’s husband is of Irish descent and she is Chinese-American. Yet evidently, people view their son, Luke, as mainly Chinese. The author’s primary aim in writing this essay was to reflect on how multiracial people are perceived. People should not be defined according to their race or racial background. Unfortunately, these actions do occur to one of the main characters of the story, Luke. It is a known fact that Luke happens to be the most influential character throughout the entire story. Living in Cambridge, Boston, going to …show more content…
After Luke’s mother had witnessed Luke denying his Chinese culture by saying, “No, I’m not,” to the Irish boys, she had a talk with him. “Luke and I immediately went over things he could say if anything like that ever happened again. I told him that he was 100 percent American. It was a sorry chore. Since then I have not asked him about the incident, hoping that he has forgotten about it, and wishing that I could, too.” Instead of talking about what he could say next time, why not show signs of comfort that it is okay to be part Chinese? The mother obviously did not do that good of a job if she is “hoping that he has forgotten about it”. How does one simply allow a four year old to go through such a traumatizing experience and expect to forget it? Not enough action was done for the son in his time of need. To add onto that, where was the Luke’s father, Dave, in all of this? Throughout the story, the father does not say anything. Sometimes, the presence of an individual does not really need to be a factor. In society, it is well known that a father image for a son is very critical. “I knew that Luke was only interested in whales and ships.” The Irish culture provides some significance with whales and ships. In essence, it can be said that Dave unknowingly is the reason why Luke gravitated more towards his Irish culture than Chinese