Poetry for Students, Volume 29

Pantoun for Chinese Women ‘‘Pantoun for Chinese Women’’ was first pub- lished in Shirley Geok-lin Lim’s third poetry collection, ...

the anthologyThe Forbidden Stitch: An Asian American Women’s Anthology, published in 1989, and in Lim’sMonsoon History: Selected ...

Milk soaks the bedding. I cannot bear the waste. My husband frowns, pretending in his haste. Oh, clean the girl, dress her in as ...

prepared for a daughter. If the desired son had been born, the father would not have needed to dig up the jar of ashes. In the f ...

Stanza 8 In the final stanza, the husband continues to frown, as he continues to pretend to believe that his daughter has no val ...

Presumably, rather than comforting his wife, he left as soon as he discovered that his new baby is a daughter. The new mother is ...

distinctly Asian issue that reflects concerns about kinship, family, and cultural values. Epigraph An epigraph is generally know ...

the practice fell into disfavor; infanticide was out- lawed, and as a result, infanticides dropped sig- nificantly. The increase ...

million men in China will be unable to marry due to a shortage of women. Regardless of the social and economic problems caused b ...

rendering of the same situation. In her poem, Lim describes the pregnant mother-to-be, her hus- band, and his mother saving ashe ...

It is the reader who creates and re-creates meaning with every reading of a poem. Kristie S. Fleckenstein argues in her essay in ...

that are hidden within the poem. In each reading of Lim’s poem, readers find something new hid- den within the images. In this p ...

way that Deleuze and Guattari used these terms, as a form of ‘‘flight from territorialization.’’ Childhood misery, of course, ha ...

the radical opposite of ‘‘emoting.’’ I dislike poems that emote, the way I dislike make-up on a woman for deceiving appearance. ...

cultural community whereas in Malaysia I would remain part of a visible and vital cultural community. Citizenship rights versus ...

as a writer? Would being put in an anthology which is then widely used in schools, colleges, and universities signal a sense of ...

tend to over-value the ‘‘surface’’ of creative works while somehow missing the essential ‘‘artistic’’ qualities? Do you enjoy de ...

at the heart of all relationships—not to celebrate but to intimate that fearful intimacy. What do you think of women (or men for ...

The English language, by her own admission (if not in so many words), is Lim’s primary, almost obsessive, concern, and there is ...

Schwartz, Lita Linzer, and Natalie K. Isser,Endangered Children: Neonaticide, Infanticide, Filicide, CRC Press, 2000. This book ...