A Study Guide for Shirley Geok-lin Lim's "Learning to Love America"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Shirley Geok-lin Lim's "Learning to Love America", excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Studentsfor all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jan 18, 2018
• ISBN: 9781535846004

Book preview

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Learning to Love America

Shirley Geok-lin Lim

1998

Introduction

Shirley Geok-lin Lim's poem Learning to Love America, from her 1998 collection What the Fortune Teller Didn't Say, finds the speaker at a point in her life as a first-generation immigrant where she can no longer deny that the United States is her home. The mother of an American son and a nature-loving resident of California, the speaker's American identity has washed over her like a wave in the Pacific. She is now as much a part of America as the sand on the beach. Known for her remarkably honest poetry and immersive sensory detail, Lim creates in this poem a series of intimate images of the speaker's American life—from flowers blooming to the taste of an artichoke to the memory of nursing her son. At once wry and delicate, the poem explores identity, love, and belonging from the unique perspective of an immigrant who discovers that, for better or worse, she is home.

Author Biography

Lim was born in Malacca, Malaysia, in 1944 to a Chinese father and a Peranakan (assimilated Chinese Malaysian) mother. After her mother abandoned the family in favor of a job in Singapore, Lim grew up in extreme poverty and instability in a household that consisted of her, her brothers, and her father. Despite this, she excelled in school. By the age of six she was fluent in Malay, the Hokkin dialect of Chinese, and English. Reading, especially, allowed her to escape the difficult day-to-day struggle with hunger—often the family survived off one meal a