Download Among the White Moon Faces: An Asian-American Memoir of Homelands (The Cross-Cultural Memoir Series) ePub

This is a memoir full of dichotomies— a richly described childhood reflected upon in the face of a adult life as an immigrant in an American diorama of sorts.

I read Shirley Geok-lin LIm's memoir Among the White Moon Faces on my Android phone. Her reflective and poetic account of her growing up and sojourn to becoming a literary scholar in western and South Asian literature was a riveting story of a woman overcoming the hardship of her childhood and the gradual understanding her self and identity during her encounter with other cultures.

I had the great fortune of being one of Professor Lim's students at UC Santa Barbara in winter 2005, when I took a course in Asian American Literature. I can say without hesitation that Professor Lim is a phenomenal teacher and excellent conversationalist, possessing a keen sense of literary analysis and a lively, understated sense of humor. I have nothing but the greatest respect for her knowledge and ability to communicate it with her students.

So it took me aback somewhat that her memoir was not an easy work for me to sink into. Among the White Moon Faces is certainly an important book, a daring account of Shirley Lim's long journey, from troubled childhood in the politically unstable climate of 1950's Malaysia to her pursuit of English literature and doctoral studies in America. There is much to see here that is new and interesting to a western readership, and much that is perhaps familiar to those who have read a good deal of immigrant literature. The book is not given to us like a story but rather like a detailed and discursive analysis of the author's memories. Time cycles back upon itself with each chapter, following the author through various stages of childhood as the focus of each chapter dictates. These memories are structured thematically, dissected and analyzed as if every event, however distant, however small, is a metaphor in an overarching epic.

Yet it's hard to say what, besides academic prestige, has been gained by the time the book ends. It's all rich stuff, treated with utmost seriousness and given so much weight that I wonder how anyone could go through life holding all these thoughts in her head without a moment of levity. Surely the Professor Lim I was acquainted with is somewhere in here? I believe her life is not as heavy as the memoir makes it, that there were plenty of laughs and smiles and day-to-day amusements, but they are not the focus of this streamlined memoir, and without the contrast of levity, the book feels almost stifled in its heavy, clinical approach to a woman's life that is, after all, ongoing. Even joyous topics such as marriage and motherhood are disseminated and analyzed for hidden meaning, stripping these events of the joy they must have held for the author. The thing that comes across strongest is Shirley Lim's constant quest for identity.

The book ends with this: "In California, I am beginning to write stories about America, as well as about Malaysia. Listening, and telling my own stories, I am moving home" (232). I have a feeling this is supposed to comfort me in some way. Does the author mean to tell us that, after 200 pages and several decades of an undeniably successful life, she still hasn't "found" home, even though home is clearly within herself? Everyone's story is different and perhaps many Asian immigrants do feel like this. The idea of such a long and tiring quest perplexes me.

I am an immigrant myself, a second-generation Polish American (technically first on account of my foreign birth, but too young to identify with that generation). I too never felt entirely American. Being "white" doesn't immediately buy you passage. Either your culture gets ignored because you're the invisible race, a white among American whites, or people latch onto your name and ask you where you--specifically you, not your parents--are "from," and tell you they adore your "accent" that isn't even there. I wear my exotic name happily but I no longer feel Polish. I have ties to both cultures, but no cradle. Does it matter? Between one interest and another, I didn't have the time to dwell on displacement. But immigrant literature is a veritable force in universities. Perhaps to many people, the destination matters more than the journey.

A strikingly different passage comes on page 154. Searching for identity out of what I can only assume is a sense of desperation, the author detours into science fiction, a genre of literature I love and had never known she was interested in. She consumes these books rather than savoring them. What does she find? "Aliens, alien planets, alien systems, alien languages, alien relations, and the dangers, risks, threats, disasters at work in alienness."

I understand the genre wasn't exactly diverse in this decade; if you're going to be reading classic SF, you're not going to get much in the way of "good" aliens. The books will be written mostly by men for men, and your default heroes will be white human males confronted with the threat of Otherness. So yes, they are slanted, but they're not all the same either.

Shirley Lim does not seem to have thought much about the true focus of SF books, the overarching themes that make brethren out of all the human races, uniting us into one world against a knowledge bigger than we can imagine. The same seems to me true of her constant focus on race and difference, undeniably important themes in literature that can sometimes overwhelm, erect barriers within ourselves instead of giving us the simple permission to "move" home.

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.

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.