For a while they wore suits or pants suits, and pants suits are kind of a women's appropriation of male costume, work costume. For me, it wasn't Western feminism or the Western workspace. It was my growing up in a house with a bunch of boys, so that male costuming just became my mode of appropriation way before, you know, Betty Friedan came along.
Shirley Geok-lin LimThere are a couple of poems I've written with masculine muses, very often the muse to me is a female.
Shirley Geok-lin LimI had to do the academic writing. At a top research university, publishing of a certain kind is very important. So your friend is right. You can't do three things well.
Shirley Geok-lin LimAs a female in a home with a whole bunch of brothers and being very close to my father, without a mother and later having a hostile relationship with my stepmother, there were all kinds of Freudian issues rising from possessing a female body that I had to negotiate with no guidance, and I did this negotiation almost instinctually.
Shirley Geok-lin LimNo one, evidently, except me has found "No Alarms" poem ironical that an obsessive theme in my writing was - and has continued to be - not being able to write.
Shirley Geok-lin Lim