What the Fortune Teller Didn't Say

by Lim, Geok-lin Shirley

• ISBN13: 9780931122910
• ISBN10: 0931122910
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-09-01
• Publisher: Univ of New Mexico Pr

Summary

Written over the last decade, these poems include memories of the author's early childhood in Malaysia, immigration to America, and travel throughout the world, and affirmations of motherhood and maturity in the New World. From her background as a Malaysian Chinese later assimilated into Western culture, she has emerged with her own voice, combining bittersweet laughter and realistic affirmation. This unique voice establishes her as an important poet. "Here are the lines of loss--of family, country, self--yet what is lost is found, and these poems probe a woman's many and changing truths in language that will deepen the vision of every reader. "--Alicia Ostriker

Table of Contents

What the Fortune Teller Didn't Say	3	(28)
What the fortune teller didn't say	3	(2)
Hands	5	(1)
My mother wasn't	6	(2)
Mother's shoes	8	(1)
At the funeral parlors, Singapore Casket Company	9	(2)
Starlight Haven	11	(2)
Ah Mah	13	(2)
Nonya	15	(2)
Ballad of the father	17	(2)
Father in China	19	(2)
Black and White	21	(2)
Father from Asia	23	(1)
Watching	24	(1)
Listening to the Punjabi singer	25	(1)
Mango	26	(1)
Jet lag	27	(4)
Lost Name Woman	31	(20)
The gift	31	(2)
The rebel	33	(1)
To a poet who died young	34	(2)
The shape of words	36	(1)
The double	37	(1)
Immigrant	38	(1)
Eating salt	39	(1)
Bread and cheese	40	(1)
Walking around in a different language	41	(1)
Lost name woman	42	(1)
White	43	(1)
Pensee	44	(2)
Presumed guilty	46	(5)
Learning to Love America	51
In paradise	51	(1)
The Holiday Inn breakfast special	52	(1)
Sexing	53	(1)
Greenhouse effect in New York	54	(2)
The anniversary	56	(2)
Mother in the suburbs	58	(2)
Tennis	60	(1)
Tag sale	61	(2)
Taking off	63	(1)
Riding into California	64	(1)
The whistler	65	(2)
Romancing Bukowski	67	(1)
Strange meeting	68	(1)
Huntington Gardens	69	(1)
New house	70	(1)
Miranda in Santa Barbara	71	(3)
Learning to love America	74	(1)
Starry night	75	(1)
Monarchs steering	76	(1)
In California with Neruda	77	(3)
Oranges	80	(2)
Self-portrait	82