Among the White Moon Faces

An Asian-American Memoir of Homelands

Shirley Geok-lin Lim

• Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY
• Year: 1997
• Print ISBN:
  9781558611443
• eBook ISBN:
  9781558617902
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

This "fascinating autobiography" from an award-winning Asian-American female author "reads like a novel" ( The Washington Post Book World).
 
With insight, candor, and grace, Shirley Geok-lin Lim recalls her path from her poverty-stricken childhood in war-torn Malaysia to her new and exciting yet uncertain womanhood in America. Grappling to secure a place for herself in the United States, she is often caught between the stifling traditions of the old world and the harsh challenges of the new. But throughout her journey, she is sustained by her "warrior" spirit, gradually overcoming her sense of alienation to find a new identity as an Asian American woman: professor, wife, mother, and, above all, an impassioned writer.
 
In Among the White Moon Faces, Lim offers a memorable rendering of immigrant women's experience and a reflection upon the homelands we leave behind, the homelands we discover, and the homelands we hold within ourselves.
 
"What sets  Among the White Moon Faces apart is that Lim writes with such aching precision, revealing and insightfully analyzing her changing roles as woman, immigrant, scholar, and Other." — San Francisco Chronicle Book Review
 
"Lim's descriptions are both lyrical and precise." — Publishers Weekly
 
"Evocative writing bolstered by insights into colonialism, race relations, and the concept of the 'other'. . . . This is an entrancing memoir." — Kirkus Reviews

“[Among the White Moon Faces] transports the reader to another time and place, with fascinating characters and a suspense that keeps the pages turning. . . . [Lim] recounts her journey with a poet’s eye for detail and a storyteller’s gift for narrative.”

—Ms.

“Lim’s descriptions are both lyrical and precise whether they are of the heat, bougainvillea and crowds of her home in Malacca or the wintery climate, the packaged food, the self-conscious bohemianism of New England.”

—Publishers Weekly

“A frank and beautifully written story of a life that is touched and shaped by the people and communities around her, and who, in that process, touch and shape those lives and communities in return. Splendid reading!”

—Midwest Book Review

“In using vivid imagery and word pictures to describe the details of her life, Lim conveys more meaning than the actual printed text on the page. . . . Shirley Lim’s book is a testament to her strength as a woman, poet, mother, teacher, wife, feminist, scholar, and Asian-American activist.”

—Sojourner: The Women’s Forum

“Immigrants come to America bearing many fabulous gifts; among the most precious of these are their stories, which span decades, oceans, and continents, opening our minds and hearts to human possibilities we might otherwise never imagine. Shirley Geok-lin Lim’s story is just such a gift.”

—Elaine Kim, coeditor of Making Waves: Writings By and About Asian American Women

“A wonderfully accessible journey into rites of passage—girl to woman to parent, student to teacher, victim to survivor.”

—Asian American Press

The Cross-Cultural Memoir Series introduces original, significant memoirs from women whose compelling histories map the sources of our differences: generations, national boundaries, race, ethnicity, class, and sexual orientation. The series features stories of contemporary women’s lives, providing a record of social transformation, growth in consciousness, and the passionate commitment of individuals who make far-reaching change possible.

THE CROSS-CULTURAL MEMOIR SERIES

Juggling: A Memoir of Work, Family, and Feminism by Jane S. Gould

Fault Lines by Meena Alexander

The Seasons: Death and Transfiguration by Jo Sinclair

I Dwell in Possibility by Toni McNaron

Lion Woman’s Legacy: An Armenian American Memoir by Arlene Voski Avakian

A Lifetime of Labor: The Autobiography of Alice H. Cook

Come Out the Wilderness: Memoir of a Black Woman Artist by Estella Conwill Májozo

Under the Rose: A Confession by Flavia Alaya

Life Prints: A Memoir of Healing and Discovery by Mary Grimley Mason

Shirley Geok-lin Lim

Published by the Feminist Press at the City University of New York

The Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, Suite 5406

New York, NY 10016

feministpress.org

Copyright © 1996 by Shirley Geok-lin Lim

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or used, stored in any information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without prior written permission of the Feminist Press at the City University of New York except in case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lim Shirley.

Among the white moon faces : an Asian-American memoir of homelands / Shirley Geok-lin Lim.

p. cm.—(The Cross-cultural memoir series)

1. Lim, Shirley—Biography. 2. Women poets, American—20th Century—Biography. 3. Asian American women—Biography.

I. Title. II. Series.

PS3562.I459Z463 1996

811'. 54—dc20.

95-25428                

eISBN 978-155861-790-2

This publication is made possible, in part, by public funds from the National Endowment of the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts. The Feminist Press is also grateful for a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The Feminist Press would like to thank Joanne Markell, Barbara Sicherman, and Genevieve Vaughan for their generosity.

To Richard, Florence, and Ursula and for Chin Som and Chye Neo

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My thanks to the Feminist Press sisters who worked with me, Alyssa Colton, Susannah Driver, Sue Cozzi, and others; to Sue Lanser for her reader’s heart; and as always to my family, Charles Bazerman and Gershom Kean Bazerman.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Cover Page

2....

Table of contents

• 1. Cover Page
• 2. Praise for Among the White Moon Faces
• 3. About the Cross-Cultural Memoir Series
• 4. Title Page
• 5. Copyright Page
• 6. Dedication
• 7. Acknowledgments
• 8. Table of Contents
• 9. Epigraph
• 10. Prologue
• 11. Part One
• 15. Part Two
• 20. Part Three
• 24. Part Four
• 27. About the Author
• 28. About the Feminist Press
• 29. Also Available from the Feminist Press