“Eating Words”: Alimentary Motifs in Shirley Geok-lin Lim’s Poetry

Authors

  • Andrew Hock Soon Ng, Monash University, Malaysia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.31436/asiatic.v8i1.453

Abstract

In diasporic literature, alimentary motifs tend to play oppositional roles in relation to nostalgia: either they are evoked to reify longing for homeland, or to disavow it. Closely linked to these roles, and especially pertinent to immigrant women, is also food’s function as critique of ideology. This essay explores food and food-related motifs in Shirley Geok-lin Lim’s poems to elicit the paradox of nostalgia inherent in them, while also demonstrating their further complication of nostalgia as a concept.

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Author Biography

Andrew Hock Soon Ng, Monash University, Malaysia

Andrew Hock Soon Ng is Senior Lecturer in Literary Studies at Monash University, Malaysia. He is the author of Dimensions of Monstrosity in Contemporary Narratives (2004), Interrogating Interstices (2008) and Intimating the Sacred (2011), and is currently working on a manuscript that considers the relationship between women and lived space in contemporary Gothic and horror narratives.

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Published

2014-06-15

How to Cite

Ng, Monash University, Malaysia, A. H. S. (2014). “Eating Words”: Alimentary Motifs in Shirley Geok-lin Lim’s Poetry. Asiatic: IIUM Journal of English Language and Literature, 8(1), 55–71. https://doi.org/10.31436/asiatic.v8i1.453

Issue

Section

Articles on Shirley Geok-lin Lim