When someone asks me now, "What do you do?" I will be able to say, "I am a writer." Shirley Geok-lin Lim More Quotes by Shirley Geok-lin Lim More Quotes From 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. Shirley Geok-lin Lim growing-upgirlboys The problem of the female body is not something that I've studied, but my memoir does treat that theme. Shirley Geok-lin Lim femalebodydoe 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. Shirley Geok-lin Lim bodywritingnumbers I always wanted to be pretty as a girl, although I believed it was not possible. Shirley Geok-lin Lim girlwanted I did not write about that kind of insecurity and anxiety between myself and my brothers, because my father was the dominant male figure as I was growing up in that home. Shirley Geok-lin Lim growing-upbrotherfather My brothers were my peers, but they were not the preeminent male figures in my emotional life. Shirley Geok-lin Lim malesemotionalbrother "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. Shirley Geok-lin Lim unhappysuccessfulwriting In actual fact, I have been an academic - a college and university teacher and scholar - for much of the last 45 years, and only rarely a writer. Shirley Geok-lin Lim collegeteacheryears 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. Shirley Geok-lin Lim sitespokesmoments 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. Shirley Geok-lin Lim citieswritingpeople 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. Shirley Geok-lin Lim alarmsjudgingwriting 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. Shirley Geok-lin Lim malesmindwar 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. Shirley Geok-lin Lim santa-barbarateachingretirement 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. Shirley Geok-lin Lim titlestransformationbook [Cancer] didn't make me more intense about not working more and just having fun more. It didn't do that either. Shirley Geok-lin Lim intensecancerfun According to [Maxine Hong] Kingston, the prose writer is "a workhorse." Shirley Geok-lin Lim prose I was nine when I first knew I wanted to be a writer, in particular, a poet. Shirley Geok-lin Lim poetninefirsts I want, I want, I want! We never grow out of it somehow. Unless we become Buddhists, maybe. Shirley Geok-lin Lim buddhistgrowswant In the same way, the people whom I most abhor, I abhor them for elements that I abhor in myself. Shirley Geok-lin Lim elementspeopleway The crows live in the world like you do. They are part of nature. Shirley Geok-lin Lim crowlike-youworld
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