|
SHIRLEY GEOK-LIN LIM
"I started writing when I was about nine. I loved the idea of going into a space where there is language which is yours, which is completely private, and which you can do anything with -- you can curse someone you cannot curse otherwise, you can create a space of beauty when all around you there is poverty and deprivation. The act of writing poems is the act that has centered me all my life."
Shirley Geok-lin Lim, born in the historic British colony of Malacca, writes from her Chinese-Malaysian heritage and the landscape of the United States, of which she is now a citizen. Her books of poetry have received the Commonwealth Poetry Prize and the American Book Award. She is professor of English and Women's Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and is currently on leave as Chair Professor of English at the University of Hong Kong.
"Riding into California"
If you come to a land with no ancestors
to bless you, you have to be your own
ancestor. The veterans in the mobile home
park don't want to be there. It isn't easy.
Oil rigs litter the land like giant frozen birds.
Ghosts welcome us to a new life, and
an immigrant without home ghosts
cannot believe the land is real. So you're
grateful for familiarity, and Bruce Lee
becomes your hero. Coming into Fullerton,
everyone waiting at the station is white.
The good thing about being Chinese on Amtrack
is no one sits next to you. The bad thing is
you sit alone all the way to Irvine.
"Pantoun for Chinese Women"
"At present, the phenomena of butchering, drowning
and leaving to die female infants have been very serious."
(The People's Daily, Peking, March 3rd, 1983)
They say a child with two mouths is no good.
In the slippery wet, a hollow space,
Smooth, gumming, echoing wide for food.
No wonder my man is not here at his place.
In the slippery wet, a hollow space,
A slit narrowly sheathed within its hood.
No wonder my man is not here at his place:
He is digging for the dragon jar of soot.
That slit narrowly sheathed within its hood!
His mother, squatting, coughs by the fire's blaze
While he digs for the dragon jar of soot.
We had saved ashes for a hundred days.
His mother, squatting, coughs by the fire's blaze.
The child kicks against me mewing like a flute.
We had saved ashes for a hundred days.
Knowing, if the time came, that we would.
The child kicks against me crying like a flute
Through its two weak mouths. His mother prays
Knowing when the time comes that we would,
For broken clay is never set in glaze.
Through her two weak mouths his mother prays.
She will not pluck the rooster nor serve its blood,
For broken clay is never set in glaze:
Women are made of river sand and wood.
She will not pluck the rooster nor serve its blood.
My husband frowns, pretending in his haste
Women are made of river sand and wood.
Milk soaks the bedding. I cannot bear the waste.
My husband frowns, pretending in his haste.
Oh clean the girl, dress her in ashy soot!
Milks soaks our bedding, I cannot bear the waste.
They say a child with two mouths is no good.
What ghosts
have welcomed you to a
new life?
Questions
1. Shirley Geok-lin Lim writes that "you have to be your own ancestor," while Lucille Clifton writes that she grew up with "no model." How are these two women's statements and the experiences they describe similar? Different?
2. Study Shirley Geok-lin Lim's pantoun and then explain how to write one. Why do you think Shirley Geok-lin Lim chose this form to talk about Chinese women? What happens when you hear a line the second time? For what subject or group would you like to write a pantoun?
3. How does the epigraph from the newspaper aid or distract you in your appreciation of "Pantoun for Chinese Women"?
Activities
1. Create a work for a group that suffers oppression. Your work might be a poem (such as a pantoun), a dance, a film, a photo essay, a song, or any other form of expression. Explain whom the work is for and why you made it.
2. Suppose you've come to a country or planet where no one like you has been before. "You have to be your own ancestor," as Shirley Geok-lin Lim says. Write a story or narrative poem describing how you make yourself feel at home. Describe some of the things that are challenging and some of the things that are enjoyable.
|
