Gish Jen
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Gish Jen, born Lillian Jen (Chinese: 任碧蓮; pinyin: Rèn Bìlián) in 1955 in Long Island,New York, is a contemporary Chinese American writer. 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, Who's Irish?. 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?"
