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If you come to a land with no ancestors
to bless you, you have to be your own
ancestor. The veterans in the mobile home
park don’t want to be there. It isn’t easy.
Oil rigs litter the land like giant frozen birds.
Ghosts welcome us to a new life, and
an immigrant without home ghosts
cannot believe the land is real. So you’re
grateful for familiarity, and Bruce Lee
becomes your hero. Coming into Fullerton,
everyone waiting at the station is white.
The good thing about being Chinese on Amtrack
is no one sits next to you. The bad thing is
you sit alone all the way to Irvine.
— “Riding into California”
This book appeared several years after Shirley Geok-lin Lim had published her memoir Among the White Moon Faces with Feminist Press in 1996.
The poems in this volume recapitulate some of the themes that had guided the author in her personal writing. They were hailed upon publication as a major breakthrough in Asian American literature. On the year of publication, Shirley Lim was an invited guest at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in New Jersey.
“This prolific poet/writer teaches us all that you can do anything. Somewhere, sometime, somehow, you can sit and meditate about the meaning of your life and write deeply heartfelt personal poems that reach into your soul, as Shirley Geok-lin Lim has done. She brings a trans-national, trans-cultural perspective that is all her own.”—Mitsuye Yamada
“Shirley Geok-lin Lim’s poems awaken us to the inner world of a woman, haunted by her passage into a new life. She speaks with lyric power of parents and children, rage, hunger, and the possibilities of survival”
— Meena Alexander
Shirley Geok-lin Lim’s poetry captures her enormous vitality and intelligence.
Author of four books of poetry, three collections of stories, two critical works, and a novel, she received the American Book Award for her memoir Among the White Moon Faces (1996).
Lim was born in Malaysia and is currently professor of English and Women’s Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara.