It is the reader who creates and re-creates
meaning with every reading of a poem. Kristie S.
Fleckenstein argues in her essay inCollege Eng-
lishthat images do not just exist. Instead, ‘‘an
image evolves when we shape a reality based on
the logic of analogy.’’ That is, readers create
meaning from the imagery that the poet creates,
and they shape the image based on analogies
with which they are familiar. Another example
of how imagery enriches ‘‘Pantoun for Chinese
Women’’ is found in Lim’s use of language to
describe the mother’s flowing breast milk. This
foundational image creates multiple supplemen-
tary images. In the most common analogy
attached to the image of breast milk, the milk
signifies the maternity of the mother and her
readiness to nurse her new baby. But in Lim’s
poem, the breast milk soaks the mother’s bed-
ding and goes to waste. It soaks the bedding
because the baby is being killed, and all that the
mother can do is mourn the waste. She grieves
for the waste of the baby, as well as for the waste
of the milk. The image of wasted breast milk
suggests multiple meanings of loss and suffering,
of a mother denied the opportunity to nurse her
baby and a baby denied her life. As Fleckenstein
observes, ‘‘An image is never just one thing; it is
many different things at the same time.’’ The
poem has more power, then, by virtue of the
multifaceted image that the poet creates of
wasted milk. Once again, it is the reader’s inter-
pretation of that imagery that infuses the poem
with meaning. Because poetry requires that the
reader seek out meaning and work for under-
standing, some readers conclude that poetry is
just too difficult to read—and prose ends up
being the more privileged literature. According
to Fleckenstein, ‘‘Historically, language has
overshadowed image, preventing us from recog-
nizing the essential role of imagery in mean-
ing.’’ If readers privilege the imagery, they
emerge from a reading of ‘‘Pantoun for Chi-
nese Women’’ with a greater understanding of
the helplessness of women’s lives in China.
Imagery is especially important in under-
standing the cultural context of ‘‘Pantoun for
Chinese Women.’’ In his essay inWomen: A
Cultural Review, Andrew Ng points out that
Lim’s poetry reflects a cultural context that posi-
tions Chinese women as both victimized and
silenced, such that their suffering has not been
given voice. While the husband in ‘‘Pantoun for
Chinese Women’’ goes outside to dig up the
ashes that he will need to kill his newborn
daughter, his wife and mother can only remain
silently in the house. The new mother holds her
baby close to her, while the husband’s mother
squats by the fire and prays. She prays, but
her prayers only emerge from her own weak
mouth. Neither woman objects to the murder
of the baby girl; in fact, they have participated
in saving the ashes and have always been pre-
pared to do what they know must be done. Ng
argues that ‘‘Lim’s poems imaginatively recreate
moments of’’ the suffering endured by Chinese
women; where these women have had no voice
and thus no history, her poems ‘‘reposition them
back into ‘history’ through a different discursive
strategy (poetry instead of official history
record).’’ If history has not recorded the suffer-
ing of women who are undervalued or even val-
ueless, then Lim can give them value by
articulating their pain and suffering. Female
infants—the primary victims of infanticide—
have even less voice, but Lim manages in ‘‘Pan-
toun for Chinese Women’’ to take these invisible
and silenced infants and make them visible. She
even gives them a voice, when she has the infant
cry against her mother’s body. The baby, who
nuzzles against her mother’s body and whose
movements remind both the mother and Lim’s
readers that this child should live, becomes real.
This is not an abstract statistic, as the newspaper
quoted in the epigraph might have provided; this
is a living child, a baby whose birth would have
been celebrated if only ‘‘she’’ had been a ‘‘he.’’
In the world of ‘‘Pantoun for Chinese
Women,’’ males are the honored members of
society. They have the advantages and the oppor-
tunities denied to females; however, it is the
women who people Lim’s poems. These female
protagonists are drawn from what Ng observes is
‘‘a distinct cultural background which privileges
the male.’’ According to Ng, Lim’s poetry, ‘‘in a
sense, can be seen as a means by which these
repressed voices can be reinstated into a public
space of discourse.’’ In ‘‘Pantoun for Chinese
Women,’’ the husband’s voice is mediated by his
wife’s narration. He is silenced, with only his
actions and mannerisms described. This is an
example of Lim’s choice to give voice to the
mother’s point of view. Ng remarks that in
Lim’s poetry, ‘‘It is often the women’s viewpoint
that is privileged,’’ and that is certainly the case in
this poem.
Lim’s use of imagery in ‘‘Pantoun for Chi-
nese Women’’ creates and enriches the meaningsPantoun for Chinese Women