Among the White Moon Faces: An Asian-American Memoir of Homelands

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 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.

Knowing the "aunt" ( who worked in the local hospital) personally in Shirley Lim's White Moon Faces and lived in Malacca for the 1st 17 years of my life this book has brought back nostalgic memories of this period in time. I live in Melbourne - Australia now. "Aunt" read the book too. She is pleased to know you are doing fine in the US.

This autobiography tracks the trajectory of a self that becomes Chinese, American, Jewish, feminist, separately and in the process all at once. It is written with clarity and a sense of quest, embodying a trans-Pacific quality of risk and self-invention, becoming diasporic and full of poetic longings among the moon faces of which I am one. I enjoyed it, and am grateful for this Chinese American scholar's auto/bio/graphic quest into poetry and belonging, creating a family and home across the waters and on the Rim. Read it and enjoy.