What exactly is an amiable irritant? GISH JEN: Yeah, well, that's not my phrase. That phrase is from Philip Roth. I think he developed it under circumstances that are similar to mine in the sense ...

BILL MOYERS: This is a working class neighborhood? GISH JEN: A working class neighborhood. BILL MOYERS: You were clearly the outsider. GISH JEN: Sometimes, when I'm talking to my son, and I'm ...

Gish Jen is the author of the novels *Typical American*, *Mona in the Promised Land*, *The Love Wife*, and *Who's Irish*, a book of stories. Her honors include the Lannan Award for Fiction and the ...

BILL MOYERS: Even though it was an Irishman? GISH JEN: Even it was an Irishman. At least he had degrees. BILL MOYERS: And so much irony in that, because then the past, it was the Irish who-- GISH ...