As you walk the streets of your neighborhood, take a good old hard look at the many different cultures that make up your community. You have the African American family a couple houses down, the Chinese family a little further down, the German couple right next door, so on and so forth. The blending of cultures in America is what makes this country so unique. But, what if you’re faced with the cultural differences within your family? What if you are just a child trying to figure out how the world works? Cultural differences can cause a family to break but can also help a child become a stronger, independent person.
“Who’s Irish?” written by Gish Jen, is a short story that explores the cultural differences between a mother and a daughter in the view on how to raise Sophie, a free-spirited, defiant toddler. Grandmother was born and raised in China. She was brought up in a…show more content… Due to the financial restraints of her parents, Sylvia has grown up in low income, prominently black neighborhoods. The struggles of day to day life is all that Sylvia has known; however, her neighbor, Miss Moore, had made it her mission to show Sylvia, along with the other children of the neighborhood, real life lessons that would help shape who they became. Miss Moore takes them to a high end toy store, one in which they could never imagine how they could ever afford to pay for such extravagant toys. By going to the toy store, Sylvia learned a very hard cultural lesson, not everything in life is equal; you have the rich and the poor, the blacks and the whites, the educated and the undereducated, so on and so forth. Bambara captures Sylvia’s response to her hard learned lesson at the end of her short story with such passion and determination. “She (her cousin) can run if she want to and even run faster. But ain’t nobody gonna beat me at