Shirley Lim was born in 1944 in Malacca, a small town on the West coast of the Malay Peninsula, Malaysia. In her memoir, Among the White Moonfaces (1996), she describes a childhood powerfully shaped by deprivation, poverty, parental violence and abandonment, and a culture that rarely recognized girls as individuals.
As a student, she was scorned by teachers for her love of English over her “native” tongue and was looked down upon for wishing to pursue her love of English literature. An academic high-flyer, she obtained her bachelor degree in English from the University of Malaysia, and pursued her PhD in American Literature at Brandeis University on a Fulbright Scholarship, which she completed in 1973. She then …
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Citation: Lai, Amy. "Shirley Lim". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 10 October 2003 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2734, accessed 23 November 2024.]
