Home / Quotes / Quote by Shirley Geok-lin Lim

Quote by Shirley Geok-lin Lim

“When I spoke at the 2012 Contemporary Women Writers' Conference in Taipei, I thought it offered an appropriate moment and site to announce my new manifesto10 and profession - to be a writer.”

Quote by Shirley Geok-lin Lim

Author

Shirley Geok-lin Lim

Shirley Geok-lin Lim is a Singaporean-born writer known for her profound insights into multiculturalism and her rich literary works. Her writings often focus on themes of race, gender, and identity, which have resonated with readers worldwide. more

You May Also Like

“The Chinese traditionally have revered age and longevity - I have one and hope for the other! - so, in Taipei, a city-hub for global Chinese who dis-identify with the People's Republic of China's construction of a Communist nationalist Chineseness, I called on the Chinese muse of writing to witness my emergence out of the academic woods.”

People Writing Age Cities China Woods Witness Chinese Republic Communist Construction Academic Longevity Muse Emergence Hub

Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim

“Some Asian American male scholars have claimed this muse to be Guong Goong, God of Literature, and, simultaneously, although not coincidentally or triflingly, God of War, but I did not have such a gendered muse in mind then.”

Mind War Literature Males Scholar Muse Asian Asian American God Of War

Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim

“My recent retirement from full-time teaching to the status of research professor at University of California-Santa Barbara (UCSB) encouraged me to come out, so to speak.”

Speak Teaching Research University California Retirement Professors Santa Barbara Santa Barbara

Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim

“The inimitable writer Maxine Hong Kingston published a book in 2002 with the title To Be the Poet. However, in contrast to the transformatory distinctions Kingston makes between the conditions of being a prose writer and "the poet," my multigenre impulses incline me to a broader transformation: to be a writer.”

Book Conditions Poet Transformation Impulse Titles Prose Distinction Contrast Incline

Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim

“According to [Maxine Hong] Kingston, the prose writer is "a workhorse."”

Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim

“"I want to be always happy," Maxine Hong Kingston announces . But, as this interview makes clear, for me, it was the desire to write poetry that kept me discontented, if not depressed and unhappy, through what many casual biographers have characterized as successful and productive decades.”

Ifs Want Writing Desire Successful Clear Decades Unhappy Interviews Productive Casual Always Happy Biographers

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.”

Writing Firsts Conditions Poet Judging Conscious Irony Collections Prize Approval Impossibility Alarms Crossings Commonwealth Writing Poetry Peninsulas

Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim

“No one, evidently, except me has found "No Alarms" poem ironical that an obsessive theme in my writing was - and has continued to be - not being able to write.”

Writing Able Found Theme Alarms Obsessive

Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim

“This condition [irony] has nothing to do with writer's block, a psychological syndrome, which is one of the few I have not diagnosed for myself!”

Conditions Block Psychological Irony Syndromes Writer's Block

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.”