These commonplace categories - wife, mother, housewife, teacher - are in fact teleological referents. They gesture to profound states of being that animate, absorb and saturate the subject, like indelible dyes spilled repeatedly over a plain fabric. No matter if the fabric is sturdy or delicate, translucent or opaque, those dyes will stain. They will color the days and years and life.
Shirley Geok-lin Lim[Cancer] didn't make me more intense about not working more and just having fun more. It didn't do that either.
Shirley Geok-lin LimI don't know where to place my body. Everyone notices that about me. I'm very restless.
Shirley Geok-lin LimFrom the world of the muse and writing, there will come, hopefully, the book. You're right, for me, that the muse is always female, and the book comes from a separate gender dimension than the concrete male world that, as you pointed out, has been surrounding me since I was an infant.
Shirley Geok-lin Lim