shirley lim

THE BIOGRAPHY OF

Shirley Lim

EARLY LIFE . AWARDS . CAREER .

QISTINA      SYEERA      IMRAN      SHYINTUJA 
  

CONTENTS

Biography i
Early life ii
Awards & Achievements iii
Career iv
Selected Poem v

- Mother's song
- The trade

Citation vi

PAGE III AWARDS & ACHIEVEMENTS

Shirley Geok-Lin Lim has Shirley Lim won twice for the
received many awards American Book Award, which are
which are, in 1980 she “Among the White Moon Faces” (1997)
published her first and “The Forbidden Stitch An Asian
collections of poems
‘Crossing the American Women’s Anthology”
Peninsula’ and she was (1989).
awarded
Commonwealth prize a
first time for a woman
and
Asian. In 1996 she got
Fulbright Distinguished
Lecturer Award. Other
than that,
Shirley Lim got an Asia
week Short Story Award
for “Mr Tang’s Uncles”
and the
Society for the Study of
Multi-Ethnic Literature
of the United States
Lifetime
Achievement Award.

PAGE IV CAREER

Shirley Geok-lin Lim was in IIUM to give a lecture titled
‘A Malaysian Imagination: Ethnicity, Gender and
Nationalism’.

Shirley Geok-Lin Lim is a Shirley Lim is a cross genre
Professor in the English writer and she also
Department at the University authored
of California, Santa Barbara several books which are
and also she taught poem, short stories,
internationally at the criticism, novel and
National University of memoir. She has served as
Singapore, the National editor or co-editor of
Institute Education of numerous scholarly works,
Nanyang Technological including The Forbidden
University. Also, she was the Stitch’ (1989), ‘Approaches
chair professor of English at to Teaching Kingston’s The
the University of Hong Kong Woman Warrior’ (1991) and
and women’s studies chair at ‘Transnational Asia
the University of California Pacific’ (1999).
(UCSB).

PAGE V SELECTED POEM

Mother's song

Beautiful man, milk teeth bared in a trap,
Whose mouth curls in despair,
She smiles at your face.
Beautiful man, twitching boy’s shoulder
Like many golden carp
Swimming to her gaze.
Beautiful man, your white skin turns redder,
Your slit eyes grow wide,
Your chin’s fuzzed with moth.
Beautiful man, fingers knifing, stab
Or roll, winding up thoughts
Like fine hair, like cloth.
Beautiful man, leaning back stock-still, now
Bunched in fury, fishy,
You play at the groom.
Beautiful man, crowsfeet walk your brow.
Your head pulls as the tide
Silvering the room.
Beautiful man, bitter, slipping her grasp.
Like strong medicine, harsh tea,
She swallows her doubts.

SELECTED POEM

The trade

She feared the iambic rictus
mechanical twitching of a chopper
gone mad unceasing adverse
to nothing a rotten twitter
among the branches of night flitter
of a lunatic crazed with meanings.
In place of reason therefore rhyme,
strict bars to hold in place feelings
not undeserving freedom, such quicklime
to strip without decay a corpse in time.
And among the tools for chopping, form.
Precise instrument, stanzas
slice to the bone, section harm
from harm. As butchers, surgeons,
dancers,
the trade is blood, nerve, and craftiness.