“Quite a while ago, I made a conscious choice to place my teaching first, so it was very ego-invested. That decision wasn't a good thing in some ways.” WayFirstsMadeChoicesDecisionTeachingEgoConsciousGood Things Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim
“I was nine when I first knew I wanted to be a writer, in particular, a poet.” FirstsWantedParticularPoetNine Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim
“The judges who awarded the 1980 Commonwealth Poetry Prize to my first collection of poems, Crossing the Peninsula and Other Poems, cited with approval and with no apparent conscious irony my early poem, "No Alarms." The poem was composed probably sometime in 1974 or 1975, and it complained about the impossibility of writing poetry - of being a poet - under the conditions in which I was living then.” WritingFirstsConditionsPoetJudgingConsciousIronyCollectionsPrizeApprovalImpossibilityAlarmsCrossingsCommonwealthWriting PoetryPeninsulas Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim
“[Irony] has everything to do with what Tillie Olsen so powerfully imagined in her short story, "As I Stand Here Ironing" and elaborates on polemically in her 1978 book, Silences, in a chapter first delivered as a talk in 1967. As Olsen clearly saw it for women, my not being a writer was a material consequence of my being a woman - a wife, mother, housewife, and a certain kind of feminist teacher - attentive, one-on-one, face-to-face, nurturing, the kind who receives high ESCI evaluation scores from undergraduates and graduate students.” FirstsKindBookStoriesFacesMotherCertainSilenceSawsTeacherWifeStudentsMaterialsConsequenceFeministIronyScoreShort StoryGraduatesChaptersFace To FaceNurturingBeing A WomanHousewifeEvaluationOne On OneGraduate StudentsWife Mother Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim
“Sometimes, in my published complaints about not being a writer, I have recalled the prospect - the yearning to be a writer - as it first formed for me.” FirstsSometimesYearningComplaints Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim
“As a first-generation "Asian American woman," for one thing, I knew there was no such thing as an "Asian American woman." Within this homogenizing labeling of an exotica, I knew there were entire racial/national/cultural/sexual-preferenced groups, many of whom find each other as alien as mainstream America apparently finds me.” FirstsAmericaJusticeGenerationsOne ThingGroupsSocial JusticeAliensMainstreamAsianFind MeAmerican WomanLabelingAsian American Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim
