nine books of poetry and one memoir under the
name Hilary Tham, served as editor for a variety
of publications, and was also a painter. Tham at-
tended the University of Malaya and graduated
with a B.A. in English. While in Malaysia, Tham
married a Jewish-American Peace Corp volunteer,
Joseph Goldberg, and converted to Judaism shortly
thereafter. In 1971 the couple came to the United
States, settling briefly in New Jersey before moving
to Arlington, Virginia, in 1973. Tham passed away
on June 24, 2005, in Arlington, from metastatic
lung cancer.
Tham occupies a unique space within Asian-
American and Asian diasporic culture as a Chi-
nese-Malaysian writer with Judaic influences.
Tham’s family spoke Cantonese, but the diverse
environment in Malaysia in which Tham grew
up played an important role in her career. Tham’s
attendance at a convent school run by Irish nuns
and a Catholic school run by Dominican monks
exposed her to a wide range of cultures, languages,
and literatures. At the urging of her prep school
English teacher in Kuala Lumpur (a school where
Tham was one of 12 females permitted to attend
the otherwise all-male institution), Tham began to
take writing seriously. After moving to the United
States, Tham continued to write and also became
active in her community. She chaired the Northern
Virginia Coalition, which helped to resettle Viet-
namese refugees; served as sisterhood president
at her synagogue; participated in various poet-
in-residence and artist-in-residence programs
throughout northern Virginia; served as editor-
in-chief of Word Works, a nonprofit poetry press;
and served as poetry editor for Potomac Review,
a biannual literary magazine. Tham was also the
recipient of several awards. Her book Bad Names
for Women (1989) won second prize in the 1988
Virginia Poetry Prizes and the 1990 Paterson Prize,
and Tin Mines and Concubines (2005) received the
Washington Writers Publishing House Prize. The
Fall/Winter 2005–06 issue of Potomac Review con-
tains a tribute to Tham.
Tham’s characters and her own sense of self
as articulated in her memoir offer perspectives
from both Malaysian and American geopoliti-
cal contexts, often critiquing both. In addition to
making transpacific crossings between Malaysia
and America, Tham’s work also moves beyond
those reference points to the broader region of
Southeast Asia, and Tham demonstrates a general
concern for humanity regardless of geographical
borders. Some critics view Tham’s range of the-
matic interests as difficult to classify within Asian-
American studies, but Tham’s work can be said
to demonstrate social concerns shared by many
Asian-American writers—for instance, issues of
race, sexuality, and what it means to be alien in a
democratic America.
While the social concerns in Tham’s work are
significant, the aesthetic aspect of her writing is
equally so. In her memoir Lane with No Name:
Memoirs and Poems of a Malaysian-Chinese Girl-
hood, Tham remembers how the nursery rhymes
and Cantonese proverbs her mother recounted
would significantly shape Tham’s own poetry.
To Tham, the language found in both Cantonese
proverbs and daily Cantonese speech was sugges-
tively condensed and imagistic. Some critics trace
the prominence of metaphors, images, and terse
vocabulary found in her work to her childhood ex-
periences with Cantonese. Tham also painted, and
she viewed both literature and painting as captur-
ing the rhythmic, emotive motions of an event.
Her book Men & Other Strange Myths: Poems and
Art (1994) blends poetry with her own drawings.
Perhaps Tham’s interest in social issues and
aesthetic form is most evident in her well-known
character Mrs. Wei, whom some have called
Tham’s poetic alter ego. Mrs. Wei appears in many
of Tham’s poems, and in 2003 Tham collected her
Mrs. Wei poems in The Tao of Mrs. Wei. A Chi-
nese figure who has resided in both Malaysia and
America, Mrs. Wei is a traditional mother who is
also outspoken on politics. The titles of Tham’s
Mrs. Wei poems are simple, yet the often ironic
form and content of those poems are packed with
social meaning and critique. A selection of titles
quickly demonstrates this point—“Mrs. Wei and
the Modern Marriage,” “Mrs. Wei and the Gay
Poet,” and “Mrs. Wei Meets the New Improved
American Dream.”
Tham’s work remains understudied, though
critics note that the turn toward transnationalTham, Hilary 283