These cross-cultural ironies echo throughout Lim's thoughtful, politically astute memoir, which covers ground ranging from the neglect and hunger of her Malaysian childhood, to her Anglophile education, to the loneliness of her first years in America. As a Chinese Malaysian, she faced discrimination not only from the colonial British, but later, after independence, from ethnic Malays as well. Reared in an expatriate culture, Lim was doubly dislocated by immigrating to America. Here, too, Lim encountered prejudice, as an Asian female, as a poet, and as a brown-skinned, British-accented anomaly who fit no one's notion of who she should be. In the end, Lim finds a kind of balance in her perpetual exile, using sisterhood and the solace of writing to create a sense of place--and to counter the pull of ancient ghosts. "Listening, and telling my own stories, I am moving home," she writes. --Mary Park
Lim's autobiography certainly qualifies for a place in Feminist Press's Cross-Cultural Memoir Series. Her father, a devotee of Western movies, named her Shirley (for her dimples, he said); the convent school sisters gave her the names Agnes and Jennifer; while Geok or "Jade" was assigned by her grandfather to all the female children, "a name intended to humble, to make a child common." Born in 1944 during the Japanese occupation of Malaysia, Lim was the only girl in a family of five boys. For her, academics represented a way to distinguish herself and earn her father's love. Her mother deserted the family when she was eight, leaving Lim increasingly rebellious and determined to escape. And she succeeded: Scholarship to the University of Malaysia was followed by a Fulbright to Brandeis, and finally an academic career and family in America. She's a sharp, even harsh commentator with a vivid memory for slights. But she's also tough with herself, with her acquiescence to her father's wishes, to a lover's manipulation, to a professor's appropriation of her thesis. She also ponders her inability to reconcile her sympathy with her Puerto Rican students and her resentment of her Puerto Rican neighbors in Brooklyn. The first woman and the first Asian to win the Commonwealth Prize for her book of poetry, Crossing the Peninsula, Lim's descriptions are both lyrical and precise whether they are of the heat, bougainvillea and crowds of her home in Malacca or the wintery climate, the packaged food, the self-conscious bohemianism of New England. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
In this autobiography of her wild and impoverished Malayan childhood and eventual emigration to America, critic and theorist Lim (Reading the Literature of Asian Americans, LJ 1/93) uses the same gender and ethnic issues discussed in her critical appraisals to delineate her "two lives." She describes the Third World poverty of her Chinese minority family, "the cultural imperialism of British colonial education," Chinese patriarchy and ambition, disappoinments in Malayan home rule, and the isolation of Asian graduate students in America. She offers both flattering and unflattering glimpses of American life as seen through immigrant eyes. Like many successful immigrants, Lim is a survivor with hard-won success. After years of struggle, she has gained prominence in the growing field of Asian American literature. Her revealing self-portrait is recommended for academic libraries and Asian American collections.
Margaret W. Norton, J. Sterling Morton H.S., West Berwyn, Ill.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
An English professor (Univ. of Calif., Santa Barbara) and a poet, Lim recounts her childhood in Malaysia and her later life in America, where she struggles to find the meaning of home and community. Lim's mother abandoned her six children when Lim was eight years old. She could not stand her husband's quick temper and their poverty. Although he raged and beat the children, Lim idolized her fun-loving, musical father, until his marriage to their former maid's teenage daughter alienated her from his affection. At the same time, prejudice against Malaysians of Chinese descent (like her father) was rising. As the only girl in a family of boys, Lim learned early that gender also set her apart from others, yet she spent much of her childhood trying to be like her wild brothers. At Catholic school, the nuns sought to shackle her rambunctious, questioning spirit. Lim, although a lover of English, was frustrated by a system that seemed only to require the memorization of facts and ignored Malaysian literature and culture. University life proved equally frustrating. Anti-Chinese riots in 1969 coupled with two stifling romances led Lim to leave for Brandeis University. The New England cold unnerved her and loneliness unmoored her, but she earned her Ph.D., married an American, moved to New York City with her husband, and began teaching at a community college in the South Bronx. Active on minority feminist concerns and a frequent visitor to Malaysia, Lim has realized that the act of writing brings her the homeland she has been searching for. Unfortunately, Lim's tale is unbalanced. The Malaysian section is stunning: evocative writing bolstered by insights into colonialism, race relations, and the concept of the ``other.'' But her account of life in America, by contrast, seems hurried and leaves some puzzling gaps in her personal life. Still, this is an entrancing memoir. (10 b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
ReviewThis exceptional, involving memoir recounts the author's life and cultural encounters from early years in Malaysia to her journey to the U. S. and her search for cultural identity as an Asian female in this country. From early childhood challenges to later struggles in making a new life in the U. S. , this charts the evolution of the author's personal and ethnic identity. -- Midwest Book Review
About the AuthorShirley Geok-Lin Lim is professor of English and women's studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
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