[Irony] has everything to do with what Tillie Olsen so powerfully imagined in her short story, "As I Stand Here Ironing" and elaborates on polemically in her 1978 book, Silences, in a chapter first delivered as a talk in 1967. As Olsen clearly saw it for women, my not being a writer was a material consequence of my being a woman - a wife, mother, housewife, and a certain kind of feminist teacher - attentive, one-on-one, face-to-face, nurturing, the kind who receives high ESCI evaluation scores from undergraduates and graduate students.
Shirley Geok-lin LimPhilosophy is a bad master for poetry; religion worse; and politics self-serving will never serve the Muse.
Shirley Geok-lin LimSaul Bellow has that character in Henderson the Rain King say: "I want, I want, I want!"9 I remember reading this passage years ago and thinking, yes, that's the human.
Shirley Geok-lin LimI do not think a similar goal, to attain fame, drove me when I was a child and young woman.
Shirley Geok-lin Lim