“I guess my writing through time has focused on a number of dimensions that reflect separately on the meaning and social place of the female body.” WritingBodySocialNumbersFemaleFocusedDimensionsRough TimesFemale Body Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim
“Growing up in Asia in a particular time period - the '50s and '60s - I attended a Catholic missionary school where I was taught by nuns and where consciousness of the body was repressed. Yet at the same time, the female body was a highly visible and sensitive site.” BodySchoolConsciousnessGrowing UpGrowingTaughtParticularPeriodsFemaleCatholicSensitiveVisibleMissionarySiteAsiaNunRepressedFemale BodyTime Periods Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim
“The consciousness of one's physical self had to be repressed because, socially, the female body was so visible, an ongoing provocation and incitement of specular curiosity and fascination.” SelfBodyConsciousnessFemaleCuriosityVisibleOngoingFascinationRepressedProvocationFemale BodyIncitement Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim
“As the only girl growing up for a long time with only boys, as you pointed out, it seems like I was always surrounded by guys. There was this sense in which my female body was a problem.” LongProblemBodySeemsGuyGirlBoysGrowing UpGrowingLong TimeFemaleFemale BodyGirls Growing Up Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim
“The problem of the female body is not something that I've studied, but my memoir does treat that theme.” DoeProblemBodyFemaleTreatsMemoirThemeFemale Body Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim
“As a female in a home with a whole bunch of brothers and being very close to my father, without a mother and later having a hostile relationship with my stepmother, there were all kinds of Freudian issues rising from possessing a female body that I had to negotiate with no guidance, and I did this negotiation almost instinctually.” KindWholeHomeBodyMotherFatherIssuesBrotherFemaleBunchAll KindsGuidanceRisingNegotiationHostilePossessingFemale BodyStepmothers Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim
“When people say "the body," frequently they mean the literal body, the physical body.” PeopleMeanBodyLiteralPhysical Body Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim
“Once you stop talking about the female body empowering itself vis-à-vis male forays or invasions or male demands or the necessity to respond to husband and son to bring the issue down to a more concrete level, the body is a different manifestation physically.” DifferentBodyLevelsTalkingIssuesSonHusbandDemandFemaleMalesManifestationEmpoweringConcreteInvasionFemale Body Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim
“The body in defense against male appropriation expresses itself through work in writing, and the work in writing produces the book. So it's a different form of creation and generation that may be viewed as creation without male contribution as a component or challenge.” WritingMayBookDifferentBodyFormChallengesGenerationsCreationProduceMalesDefenseContributionComponentsAppropriation Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim
“The poem is not a physical body. It's a textual body that has life only insofar as it can act symbolically. It cannot physically act.” BodyPhysical Body Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim
“In that way, I don't understand myself. It might have to do with my own conflicts, where to place my body as a child, which I have carried over to now. In this way I'm constantly dislocated.” WayChildrenBodyMightMy OwnConflict Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim
“I don't know where to place my body. Everyone notices that about me. I'm very restless.” KnowsBodyRestless Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim
“Emerging into writership, I have plans to discover my other themes, of nation and country, love and conflict, the body and transcendence, mutilation and wholeness, starvation and wicked plenty, and more. That is, I am already thinking ahead to more writing.” ThinkingWritingCountryBodyNationsPlansConflictPlentyThemeWickedWholenessTranscendenceEmergingStarvationMutilationCountry LoveThinking Ahead Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim
