Pantoun for Chinese Women
‘‘Pantoun for Chinese Women’’ was first pub-
lished in Shirley Geok-lin Lim’s third poetry
collection,No Man’s Grove, and Other Poems,
which was published in 1985. ‘‘Pantoun for Chi-
nese Women’’ is one of Lim’s most frequently
discussed poems, in part because of its stark
description of murder. The poem personifies
the epigraph, which describes the increase in
female infanticide in 1980s China, by providing
a singular example of female infanticide. Read-
ers are thus forced to confront a social reality
that is too often hidden away. They are also
exposed to the helplessness experienced by Chi-
nese women who must accept a tradition that
values sons and devalues daughters. The ambiv-
alence of the mother who agrees to the murder of
her infant daughter is a powerful image that
forces Lim’s readers to consider the complexity
of motherhood and marriage in such a culture.
Thepantounstyle, also spelledpantun,isa
Malaysian technique that involves a very intri-
cate repetition of lines. In Lim’s poem, the tight
construction of the pantoun, with its iterations,
creates a greater emphasis on the injustice and
oppression that Chinese women face. Lim
weaves themes of infanticide, motherhood, and
the implications of long-established cultural tra-
dition into a poem that turns a statistic into a
very real vision. Lim’s poem reveals the injustice
and oppression that women face and the effect
this culture has on women’s lives in China. ‘‘Pan-
toun for Chinese Women’’ has been reprinted in240
SHIRLEY GEOK-LIN LIM
1985