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Title: Among the White Moon Faces: An Asian-American Memoir of Homelands (Cross-Cultural Memoir Series) by Shirley Lim, Shirley Geok-Lin Lim ISBN: 1-55861-179-7 Publisher: Feminist Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (6 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A distinct contribution to cross-cultural biography
Comment: This book is a distinct contribution to the genre of cross-cultural literature which deal with themes of identity and displacement. Although many American reviewers describe her as an Asian-American writer, this description fails to capture the unique perspective she brings from her origins from one of the smaller Asian countries (Malaysia) which has contributed relatively fewer immigrants to the United States than have other sources of Asian-America writers - Korea, Japan, Vietnam, or China. Sharing some of the author's background in having also grown up in Malaysia and studied in the United States as a student, I was personally attracted to this book. In this autobiography, Shirley Lim explores identity and adaptation in multiple settings, from growing up in a Chinese community in multi-racial Malaysia before and after independence from British colonial rule, through her student experiences in the United States which finally becomes the adopted home where is teaches college students and is a writer. Her style is witty, direct, and intensely personal, and powerfully conveys the sense of otherness and acute observation which comes with being caught in cultural cross-currents. I recommend this highly.
Rating: 3
Summary: Similar Themes
Comment: Shirley Lim's book, Among the White Moon Faces, takes the reader through her life, starting from when she was a young girl in Malaysia, through all of her schooling, and through her move to the United States. Throughout the book she describes her thoughts and her feelings on her various hardships, and really tries to communicate with the reader.
Personally, I felt very ambivalent about the book. I didn't particularly like, nor dislike it. The writing is advanced, and complex, so it's really not for younger readers. If you've read a lot of other works by Asian American writers, you'll notice a lot of similar themes. I didn't feel as if Shirley Lim said anything new, or different with this book. Also, I felt like the second half of the book went very slowly. However, if you enjoy a lot of descriptive writing, or autobiographies, you'll like this book.
Rating: 5
Summary: A master of identity
Comment: Shirley Geok-Lin Lim's memoir AMONG THE WHITE MOON FACES begins with her girlhood in 1940s Malaysia. From te beginning, her identity is complex and ambivalent: the daughter of a Chinese-speaking father and a Malay-speaking mother who separate when she is young, she is educated in an English-language school in a nation torn over whether to discard English as a remnant of colonialism. Lim's life falls apart when she is six years old. The family loses its money, her mother abandons her abusive husband, and little Shirley is forced on the charity of disdainful relatives. In the years that follow, even as Malaysia gains its independence from Great Britain and careens between multiethnic democracy and Malay nationalism, Shirley tries to make a life for herself. She struggles to attend college and to build a career as a student of literature, despite the potent obstacles she faces in the form of chauvinist male colleagues and boyfriends. Ultimately, she moves to the United States to attend graduate school, just in time to avoid the explosive anti-Chinese riots which put a crushing end to the dream of a nonracial society. Thus marooned in the United States, Lim must struggle once again to make a place for herself, as an Asian-American woman. She earns a doctorate, marries, has a son, becomes a professor (first at an urban community college with a largely Latino student population, later in the suburbs) and discovers feminism. AMONG THE WHITE MOON FACES is an unforgettable experience. It is simultaneously a picaresque tale made up of ironic and often hilarious incidents, an incisive account of post-colonial Malaysia, an inspiring tale of a modern immigrant "making good," and a readable case study of the experience of a thoughtful women in modern society. Perhaps most importantly, the work is a model exposition of the complexities of identity. Lim constantly tries to discover who she is, and where there is a "homeland" for her, where she can be safe and accepted. After taking us through that quest with her, Lim the mature woman makes us understand that we must build our own individual "homes" while working to construct a larger home for society. Lim is unsparing about the limitations of most people's vision, but she does not hector, and she is no more sparing of herself for being unsure about her own views (one classic anecdote recounts her ambivalent relations with the Latino apartment dwellers who take over the front stoop of her house). Fortunately, the little girl who was once constantly punished for telling the truth has not learned her lesson. She continues to enlighten us and remind us of our national purpose as Americans to forge an inclusive and varied society.
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Title: Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language by Eva Hoffman ISBN: 0140127739 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 February, 1990 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Getting Home Alive by Aurora Levins Morales ISBN: 0932379192 Publisher: Firebrand Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 1986 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: Visions of America: Personal Narratives from the Promised Land by Wesley Brown, Amy Ling ISBN: 0892551747 Publisher: Persea Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 1992 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Before Night Falls by Reinaldo Arenas, Dolores M. Koch ISBN: 0140157654 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 1994 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Down These Mean Streets by PIRI THOMAS ISBN: 0679781420 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 25 November, 1997 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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