Entangled Allegiances and Multiple Belongings in Shirley Geok-lin Lim’s<i> Among the White Moon Faces: An Asian American Memoir of Homelands<i/>

Abstract

In Among the White Moon Faces: An Asian American Memoir of Homelands (1996), Shirley Geok-lin Lim writes, “The dominant imprint I have carried with me since birth was of a Malaysian homeland†and “there are homelands of the memory and homelands of the future, and for many of us, they are not the same†(231, 191). Oscillating between her birthplace, Malaysia, and her adopted homeland, the United States, Lim embarks on a whirlwind journey to find a place called home both literally and metaphorically throughout her poetically crafted memoir. Lim's mixed personal and cultural heritages, and her geographical and emotional wanderings which cross multiple terrains problematise the static anchorage of the idea of home, nationhood, and personal and cultural identities. In her narratives of home and exile, Lim simultaneously captures the trauma of displaced identities, the nostalgic yearning for her native land, and the loneliness of an exile, but also celebrates the dynamic multiplicity of transnational identities and homelands.