Shirley Geok-lin Lim (1944-) was born in Malacca Malaysia. She is a American writer of poetry, fiction, and criticism. Her first collection of poems, Crossing The Peninsula, published in 1980, won her the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, a first both for an Asian and for a woman. Among several other awards that she has received, her memoir, Among the White Moon Faces, received the 1997 American Book Award.
Born in Melaka, Malaysia into a life of povert...
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Shirley Geok-lin Lim (1944-) was born in Malacca Malaysia. She is a American writer of poetry, fiction, and criticism. Her first collection of poems, Crossing The Peninsula, published in 1980, won her the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, a first both for an Asian and for a woman. Among several other awards that she has received, her memoir, Among the White Moon Faces, received the 1997 American Book Award.
Born in Melaka, Malaysia into a life of poverty, deprivation, parental violence, and abandonment in a culture that, at that time, rarely recognised girls as individuals, Lim had a pretty unhappy childhood. Reading was a huge solace, retreat, and escape for her. Scorned by teachers for her love of English over her "native" tongue, she was looked down upon for her pursuit of English literature. Her first poem was published in the Malacca Times when she was ten. By the age of eleven, she knew that she wanted to be a poet.
Lim had her early education at Infant Jesus Convent under the then...
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