distinctly Asian issue that reflects concerns about
kinship, family, and cultural values.
Epigraph
An epigraph is generally known as an inscription
used to mark a burial. Originally epigraphs were
used to mark Egyptian tombs. The Greeks
and Romans wrote epigraphs to celebrate their
generals, but they also wrote epigraphs that cele-
brated the lives of their wives and children. An
epigraph is also a quotation placed at the begin-
ning of a literary work to serve as a sort of
introduction to the topic. The use of the epi-
graph to begin Lim’s poem correlates with its
purpose as a way to mark a tomb. ‘‘Pantoun
for Chinese Women’’ is in a sense a funeral ode
for a newborn child, and the epigraph serves as
the tombstone that explains that this child is only
one of many who have died for the same rea-
son—because the child was a girl.
Pantoun
The pantoun poem, which is sometimes also
spelledpantoumorpantun, originated in Malay-
sia during the fifteenth century. The poem con-
sists of several four-line stanzas; the number of
stanzas has no designated limit, and so the poem
can be any length. The structure is very rigid,
however. The second and fourth lines of every
stanza are repeated as the first and third lines in
the following stanza. The first line of the poem is
also repeated as the final line of the poem. Thus,
almost every line in a pantoun is repeated once.
Typically, the first two lines of each stanza create
an image, while the final two lines provide the
thematic meaning. One of the most interesting
aspects of a pantoun is how the meaning can be
changed when the lines are repeated. Lim does
this with subtle changes in wording and punctu-
ation. For example, in the fifth stanza, the nar-
rator describes her baby’s two feeble mouths and
her mother-in-law praying; when the line is
repeated in the sixth stanza, the mother-in-law
is the one said to have two feeble mouths. This
indicates that the mother-in-law has little more
power than her newborn granddaughter.
Social Awareness Poetry
Poetry can be used to increase social awareness
of injustice. Poetry that focuses on social issues
can give voice to topics that are important but
are not often discussed. Poems of protest can be
used to seek an end to war, as they were during
the Vietnam War, and they can be used to create
social change. The emotional impact of a poem
can spur readers to action; Lim’s poem, for
example, may inspire readers to investigate
infanticide and work to eliminate the practice.
Lim’s use of the mother as narrator makes the
poem more personal and the impact of infanti-
cide more dramatic, thus making the poem itself
more influential.Historical Context
History of Infanticide
Lim’s poem ‘‘Pantoun for Chinese Women’’ puts
a personal face on the story of infanticide in
China. Lim shows only one family’s decision to
kill their infant girl, but the problem, of course,
extends far beyond that single family. The his-
tory of infanticide is quite long. Female infanti-
cide was practiced by the Greeks during their
golden age and has been practiced by almost
every civilized country since then. Many victims
of infanticide have been children with physical
handicaps or female infants. Often, population
control and economics have been motivating
factors for infanticide. In times of food short-
ages, infants may be killed to preserve the supply
of food, but female infanticide in particular
reveals a preference for male children. Infanti-
cide may have been a serious problem in Arabia,
as well, since the Koran includes laws against
female infanticide. Indeed, the historical evi-
dence regarding such laws tends to suggest that
infanticide must have been enough of a problem
to create a need to outlaw the practice. In Vic-
torian England, infanticide was frequent enough
to become the subject of novels, such as those
written by Charles Dickens and George Eliot.
Infanticide is even a problem in the United
States, which has one of the highest levels of
infant murder among developed countries. In
fact, historical evidence suggests that at the end
of the 1970s, female infanticide was no more
frequent in China than in many European coun-
tries. For children under one year of age, the
murderer is most often the mother. Historically,
in fact, the parent who most frequently commits
infanticide is the mother.Infanticide in China
As is the case for nearly all countries, in China
infanticide has a long history, but after the for-
mation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949,Pantoun for Chinese Women