Reader: Lisa Runnels
Respondent: Linda Quarles
Recorder: Yvonne Hopkins
19 April 2001

Shirley Geok-lin Lim, "Father from Asia"

Unsettling America, 19

Biography Shirley Lim

Shirley Lim is an award winning writer of fiction, poetry and criticism who strives to bring together, rather than separate, the multiplicities in the different threads of her cultural identity. She was born in 1944 in a small Malaysian town. Lim endured a childhood of poverty, parental violence and abandonment. Her mother abandoned the family after the failure of the families business. I had trouble finding anything about her family other than she had five brothers. As a girl in her society she was rarely recognized. She describes herself during this period as "a wild girl who ran with the boys and alone through the streets." Lim says of growing up, "Growing up when I did, there weren't many other recreational alternatives, and I had a pretty unhappy childhood. Reading was a huge solace, retreat, escape. I was a really obsessive reader. Somewhere along the line, I had a sense I should write about things I knew rather than read about things I didn't know. I wanted to write my own voice, my own community."

Finding her own voice meant coming to an understanding of her native Chinese-Malaysian culture. She was scorned by teachers for her love of English over her "native" tongue and was looked down upon for wishing to pursue her love of English Literature.

With an intimate tone, Lim uses her poetry to reach into the past to make sense of the present. Thematically, questions of identity and transition, gender, race, and the complexities of relationships permeate Lim's poetry. Dreams and her childhood experiences often provide inspiration and source material.

Lim says that one of the "major thematics" to emerge from her work is the story of emigration from Asia to the U.S. As an Asian, she came to see the reality of the U.S. that had been glamorized before she came. In Malaysia she was an outsider for being and "Anglophile freak"; in the U.S. she was lonely in a society where she was treated with awkward stiffness and tentativeness. "There are many ways," she laments, "in which America tells you you don't belong." (Among the White Moon Faces)

A simple, yet important element in Lim's writing is her profound honesty. Her work possesses a rare openness that makes her an accessible voice and courageous role model to all female readers, not just those of similar heritage.

"Across the divisions of race and class (between women), a rare yet common ground is visible. We understand each other in devious ways: our physical desires and the shame we have been trained to feel over our bodies, our masked ambitions, the distance between our communities and our hungry selves, our need to be needed. (I find) a sensibility of support that growns when social gender is recognized as a shared experience." (quoted from Among the White Moon Faces, 157)

The Objectives I want to talk about are Literary Objective 2d: How lyric poems represent the different stages of the Immigrant Narrative and Cultural Objective 1a, under the first bullet: In terms of comparison, immigrants may experience problems of "minority" cultures in the first generation(s), and they may suffer discrimination and marginalization by the dominant culture on account of racial and cultural differences as long as those differences are visible.

Father from Asia

Shirley Lim

Father, you turn your hands toward me.

Large hollow bowls, they are empty (could be actual hands, but most likely this represents the poverty and hunger she remembers as a child.)

Stigmata of poverty. Light pours

Through them, and I back away, (this is a powerful image of the wounds inflicted on Christ at the crucifixion and she uses that image to invoke fear and the shame of poverty. But maybe also the anger of poverty. Being a child with that label would be hard and perhaps cause her to be angry.)

For you are dangerous, father (in her biography there is information of violence in her home growing up. I couldn't find anything specific, but if the violence came from her father, and he was the parent left after her mother abandoned the family, then she could be speaking literally)

Of poverty, father of ten children,

Father of nothing, from whose life

I have learned nothing for myself.

You are the father of childhood,

Father from Asia, father of sacrifice.

I renounce you, keep you in my sleep,

Keep you two oceans away, ghost

Who eats his own children, (he is an image that she needs to keep at a distance. And the sacrifice she writes about isn't any sacrifice that he made for his children, but the sacrifices they made because of him: giving up their childhood, growing up to fast, etc.)

Asia who loved his children,

Who didn't know abandonment,

Father who lived at the center of the world,

Whose life I dare not remember, (his needs came first and the children's needs were secondary and any parent knows that you don't think of yourself first, but the needs of your children. I keep thinking that this father thinks he is the center of the universe and everyone should see him that way. The child speaking is smart enough to know this philosophy is wrong.)

For memory is a wheel that crushes, (I like this line because when we look to the past we sometimes romanticize. We don't always remember the bad that happened, but have tunnel vision seeing only the good. Our memory crushes the bad letting us only see the good.)

And Asia is dust, is dust. (Asia can't really give the love she seeks from a parent because it is only soil, but it's more than what she feels she received from her father and mother.)

(What I hear in the poem is anger, but in the end a letting go and I wonder if she isn't exercising her feelings about her childhood through her poems. She seems to be lashing out at the old country or older generation and exerting her voice. Her assimilation to this new culture is easy because what she left behind was so painful. I am making assumption that the speaker is Lim and because of that she finds acceptance here sometimes difficult. She looks different so she is viewed as different.)

That is almost all I have except for one last quote that jumped out at me.

**No one who has not left everything behind her -- every acquaintance, tree, corner lamppost, brother, lover -- understands the peculiar remorse of the resident alien ... a registered alien is neither here nor there... A resident alien has walked out of a community's living memory, out of social structures in which her identity is folded... The alien resident mourns even as she chooses to abandon. Her memory, like her guilt and early love, is involuntary... (Lim, 1996, p.160).**

Yvonne Hopkins

Recorder’s Summary for Father From Asia

Lisa remarked that the poem ex presses great anger. The poet is trying to find her voice and come to terms with her past. Her anger is directed towards her father who failed in his responsibilities to his family. The image of the hands is related to the image of the provider. However, the father in the poem was self-centered and did not make the sacrifices necessary to assure the well being of his children. Rather, there is a sense of danger and abuse associated with the father. The reference to "stigmata" reflects the image of Christ and suffering, but also the stigma of poverty and the child’s sense of shame. The poet recognizes the suffering in her past, but knows she needs to move on. As she matures, she becomes more positive and self-assured.

Dr. White agreed with Lisa that the poem is especially profound.

Linda drew parallels with the father in Breadgivers. She felt there was a sense not so much of physical danger, but the danger of staying and embracing the father’s ways.

Pam felt that the hands being held out also signified child abuse.

Lisa commented that the girl has nothing, and the father offers nothing.

Rachel presented a different view in defense of the father. He loved his children, but was left behind. Rachel also mentioned the motif of the child leaving the parents behind while the father reaches out his hands towards her as if begging. She felt that the danger arose from his need to protect his family. Without a mother, the father becomes a pivotal figure. Dust represents a biblical allusion. Asia is dust. The poet wishes to destroy Asia because of the past and painful memories.

Dr. White identified the Breadgivers father as symbolic of the old world. The same applies here. Asia and the father are old world.

Lisa reminded us of the personal nature of the poem.

Yole commented that the writer has not come to terms with her issues. She has not let go.

Lisa said that in coming to terms with abuse the writer has to let go, forgive. She cannot change the past. The "wheel" crushes bad memories.

Dr. White noted that the poem reflects Stage 4 of the Immigrant Narrative, and the writer is evolving into Stage 5.