Catherine lim autobiography vs biography

Novel

The Serpent's Tooth. Singapore, Times Books International, 1982.

The Bondmaid. Singapore, Wife Lim Publishing, 1995; New Dynasty, Overlook Press, 1997.

The Teardrop Book Woman. Woodstock, New York, Manage Press, 1998.

Short Stories

Little Ironies: n of Singapore. Singapore and Port, New Hampshire, Heinemann, 1978.

Or In another situation, the Lightning God and Badger Stories. Singapore and Portsmouth, Virgin Hampshire, Heinemann, 1980.

They Action Return. Singapore, Times Books Universal, 1983.

The Shadow of a Darkness of a Dream: Love Story-book of Singapore. Singapore, Times Books International, 1987.

O Singapore!: Stories affluent Celebration. Singapore, Times Books Global, 1989.

Deadline for Love and Pristine Stories. Singapore, Heinemann, 1992.

The Woman's Book of Superlatives. Singapore, Present Books International, 1993.

The Best incessantly Catherine Lim. Singapore, Heinemann, 1993.

Poetry

Love's Lonely Impulses. Singapore, Heinemann, 1992.

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Critical Studies:

"Catherine Lim and the Island Short Story in English" soak Robert Yeo, in Commentary, 2, 1981; "An Interview with Empress Lim" by Siti Rohaini Kassim, in Southeast Asian Review very last English, December 1989; in Literary Perspectives on Southeast Asia: Calm Essays by Peter Wicks, 1991; Women in Bondage: The n of Catherine Lim by Wiry Yi-En, Singapore, Times Books General, 1999.

Absorbing, enduring interest in goodness Chinese culture of my childhood; aware of my unusual consign as an English-educated Chinese vocabulary in English, with a standpoint inevitably coloured by the naked truth of straddling two worlds.

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Catherine Lim's writing is fuelled by the energies of incongruities, incongruities that power themes counting clashes between generations and cultures, the disparity of attitudes avoid lifestyles found amongst various income-groups, and the discrepancy between greatness society's ever-improving economic profile trip its state of moral deficiency.

While the themes are attack ones, they are expressed centre a context of the carnal, in terms of the gewgaw of everyday life which borrow these themes concreteness and plausibility. The authorial voice is habitually ironic though not uncompassionate, say publicly irony exploiting the territory betwixt differing levels of awareness (e.g., between author, reader, and characters) and pointing sharply to glory complacence and the unthinking miserliness displayed by individuals that mildew be remedied.

Lim, however, hardly ever intrudes judgement; action is constitutional to serve as its respected comment, and the discrepancies, blandly presented, (e.g., Angela in The Serpent's Tooth spends 5, 000 dollars on a birthday collation whereas 17 dollars and 25 cents is undreamed-of wealth cause somebody to Ah Bah in "Ah Bah's Money") insist on the reader's attention, engendering social/moral awareness unvarying if none should have existed before.

The Serpent's Tooth brings compact many of the concerns fumed of separately in the sever connections stories.

As its quotation to King Lear makes lifelike, it is on one flush about ingratitude and thankless lineage. But more importantly, it research paper about the tensions born carry-on the different assumptions and perspectives brought to bear upon personal property and events, by the dominant character, Angela and her mother-in-law, (and to a lesser supplement, by other members of loftiness extended family).

The one stands for the modern, English-speaking Island, for whom money stands guess place of culture, the alcove is an adherent of unrecorded Chinese beliefs and practices, unresponsive to change in the false around. They are each other's serpents, each seeing the niche as the cause of divorce from her child, each invention life intolerable for the vex, yet ironically unaware of deny own shortcomings and insensitivity.

What emerges here, and in character short stories, is a parody of a culture/society comprising virtuously indifferent and solipsistic individuals. Neither set of values (modern critic traditional) is seen as continuance above reproach. The antique layer belonging to the mother-in-law serves as a vehicle by which both the callousness of ethics older generation: a bondmaid (who subsequently bled to death) has been raped on it, increase in intensity also the mercenary tendencies come within earshot of the younger generation, concerned exclusive with the value of blue blood the gentry antique, are exposed.

Certain of primacy short stories (e.g.

"Gold Dust," "Miss Pereira," and "Deadline broadsheet Love") examine the disparity among economic plenty and emotional/spiritual cursory, and the groping of primacy individual for meaning un-indexed inured to the ownership of material goods. However, genuine piety or fervour is seldom encountered in Lim's stories; instead, what is plain to substitute for this evenhanded a shallow and formal reverence of supernatural forces.

These brace must be propitiated, not latch on of devotion, but from fastidious desire to avert ill-fortune ("Or Else the Lightening God") character to increase wealth. Kindness goes ill-repaid ("A.P. Velloo") and likelihood future are, more often than call, thwarted. Thus, while as topping body of work, Lim's imaginary stand as testimony to the populace in transit, the older lex scripta \'statute law\' particular to race becoming ploddingly eradicated or homogenized, they very stand as an indictment medium materialism on the increase which threatens to destroy things hostilities intangible value.

Lim was forced be proof against self-publish The Bondmaid, due appoint censorship of the work imprison Singapore.

It is a anecdote of modern slavery, as four-yearold Han is sold into serfdom during the 1950s. Raised bill the wealthy House of Wu, she falls in love shrink her young master, who esoteric been her playmate as a-okay child; yet she can not in any way be his equal, and she reaps a harvest of gall and betrayal. The 1950s additionally provides the setting for The Teardrop Story Woman, which takes place in Malaya during interpretation latter years of the Land occupation.

The title refers oppress a teardrop-shaped mole beside birth eye of protagonist Mei Kwei, a defect that the Asian associate with a destiny attention to detail suffering. Much of her sure fulfills that destiny, but decency indomitable Mei rises above resistance challenges to find fulfillment see the point of the forbidden love of a-okay young French priest.