cultural community whereas in Malaysia I
would remain part of a visible and vital cultural
community. Citizenship rights versus ethnic
community vitality: perhaps that is the dilemma
in US assimilation for Asians coming to
America.
MAQ: What are the distractions of a modern
writer? Do you think literature could survive the
current technological onslaught or is it becoming
increasingly ‘‘obsolete’’—‘‘finished,’’ as some would
suggest?
SL:You are not the first to put forward the
death of literature. When the Internet first came
into popular use, as distinct from its use by uni-
versity researchers, there was a great deal of talk
about the disappearance of print—no more
newspapers, journal publications, books. But e-
books have not taken off, and e-publishing still
suffers from an excessive ephemerality, even in
the context of the relative short lives of journals.
Instead, more and more people world-wide
have taken to literacy, especially in English, as
they engage in writing e-mail, memos, interac-
tions in chat rooms. That is, more and more of
contemporary human reality is transpiring as
written text. Current technology is turning
humans in a massive manner into cyborgs of
the written (word-processing).
Thus, I do not see ‘‘literature’’ as becoming
obsolete but as being transformed where it inter-
faces with technology, but also maintaining its
ancient pleasures of narrative and song. The
amount of poetry and its accessibility over the
Internet is amazing. As for distractions facing
the modern writer, when were distractions, be
they the insistent necessities of livelihood and
family or decadent corruptions of drink and
play, ever absent for writers?
MAQ: How is present internationalism/glob-
alism important to the writer and literature?
SL: I had intimated earlier that present
globalism may have different emphases for dif-
ferent writers. As part of a global cultural indus-
try, publishing has been affected by the tastes
and purchasing habits particularly of profitable
markets in the West. Writers who are also
national intellectuals are inevitably influenced
by ideas and practices from outside their local
sphere. The Bengali Nobel Laureate Rabindra-
nath Tagore was as much influenced by Western
philosophical values of modernity as by Hindu-
based philosophy. Lu Xun, the preeminent
Chinese writer for the first part of the twentieth
century, studied medicine in Japan, itself under-
taking reform with European models as guides.
Gao Xingjian, the first Nobel Laureate from
China, now lives in France. Abdullah bin Abdul
Kadir Munshi’sHikayat Abdullah(1849) would
not have been written without the instruction
received from Middle Eastern Islamic thought
and the influence of British colonialism. In this
way, ‘‘internationalism’’ whether as colonialism
or as individually undertaken study, has had a
profound influence on writers from Asia for
centuries.
Is this openness of writers to external intel-
lectual forces important and continuing today? I
hope so...
Source:Mohammed A. Quayam, ‘‘Shirley Geok-lin Lim:
An Interview,’’ inMELUS, Vol. 28, No. 4, Winter 2003,
pp. 83–99.Kirpal Singh
In the following excerpt from an interview, Lim
speaks of herself as a poet and a woman.
...[Kirpal Singh:] More and more your
poems appear to adopt a very strong ‘‘women’s’’
voice. Do you think that there is a need still for
women to ‘‘band’’ together? Has there not been, in
your opinion, a real change so that poets like
yourself can now put behind you women’s issues
and write for and about everyone?
[Shirley Geok-lin Lim:]I am not certain
how to respond to this question, as I reject
almost all its premises. First, I do not see that
women ‘‘band’’ together. Some women are acti-
vists and organize politically to achieve social
justice. Many others live individual, separate
lives, identifying with their husbands and fami-
lies or communities. Also, I do not write poems
in order to express women’s issues, nor poems
directed only to women. I write about what is
important to me emotionally, and about what I
find beautiful or mysterious. The notion that I
can now put something behind me because of
‘‘real’’ social change in women’s positions in the
world is nonsense. I don’t write polemical or
political tracts. Should a man stop writing
about his feelings for his father once his father
is dead or about how trees are mysterious once
the United Nations passes a world ban against
illegal timber clearing?
WhenCrossing The Peninsulawon the Com-
monwealth Poetry Prize [1980], did you feel that
you had arrived? What does ‘‘arrival’’ mean to youPantoun for Chinese Women