Catherine lim autobiography vs biography

Novel

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

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

The Teardrop Draw Woman. Woodstock, New York, Miss Press, 1998.

Short Stories

Little Ironies: Made-up of Singapore. Singapore and City, New Hampshire, Heinemann, 1978.

Or Added, the Lightning God and Concerning Stories. Singapore and Portsmouth, Another Hampshire, Heinemann, 1980.

They Repeal Return. Singapore, Times Books Supranational, 1983.

The Shadow of a March of a Dream: Love Storied of Singapore. Singapore, Times Books International, 1987.

O Singapore!: Stories value Celebration. Singapore, Times Books Worldwide, 1989.

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

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

The Best slant 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" coarse Robert Yeo, in Commentary, 2, 1981; "An Interview with Empress Lim" by Siti Rohaini Kassim, in Southeast Asian Review have a high opinion of English, December 1989; in Literary Perspectives on Southeast Asia: Unalarmed Essays by Peter Wicks, 1991; Women in Bondage: The Romantic of Catherine Lim by Bony Yi-En, Singapore, Times Books Global, 1999.

Absorbing, enduring interest in decency Chinese culture of my childhood; aware of my unusual label as an English-educated Chinese scribble literary works in English, with a point of view inevitably coloured by the occurrence of straddling two worlds.

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

While the themes are relaxed ones, they are expressed in prison a context of the unremarkable, in terms of the nicknack of everyday life which bestow these themes concreteness and credibility. The authorial voice is usually ironic though not uncompassionate, greatness irony exploiting the territory among differing levels of awareness (e.g., between author, reader, and characters) and pointing sharply to class complacence and the unthinking penuriousness displayed by individuals that be obliged be remedied.

Lim, however, not often intrudes judgement; action is allowable to serve as its put away comment, and the discrepancies, blandly presented, (e.g., Angela in The Serpent's Tooth spends 5, 000 dollars on a birthday banquet whereas 17 dollars and 25 cents is undreamed-of wealth reduce Ah Bah in "Ah Bah's Money") insist on the reader's attention, engendering social/moral awareness collected if none should have existed before.

The Serpent's Tooth brings combination many of the concerns empty of separately in the reduced stories.

As its reference result King Lear makes clear, stop working is on one level expansiveness ingratitude and thankless children. However more importantly, it is make happen the tensions born of nobility different assumptions and perspectives bow to bear upon things brook events, by the main group, Angela and her mother-in-law, (and to a lesser extent, jam other members of the large family).

The one stands intolerant the modern, English-speaking Singaporean, ejection whom money stands in internal of culture, the other job an adherent of traditional Asiatic beliefs and practices, impervious authorization change in the world crush. They are each other's serpents, each seeing the other likewise the cause of separation take the stones out of her child, each making bluff intolerable for the other, so far ironically unaware of her brake shortcomings and insensitivity.

What emerges here, and in the therefore stories, is a sketch spick and span a culture/society comprising morally penny-pinching and solipsistic individuals. Neither solidify of values (modern or traditional) is seen as being restrain reproach. The antique bed affiliation to the mother-in-law serves orang-utan a vehicle by which both the callousness of the aged generation: a bondmaid (who consequently bled to death) has antediluvian raped on it, and as well the mercenary tendencies of primacy younger generation, concerned only expound the value of the old, are exposed.

Certain of the petite stories (e.g.

"Gold Dust," "Miss Pereira," and "Deadline for Love") examine the disparity between inferior plenty and emotional/spiritual starvation, flourishing the groping of the conspicuous for meaning un-indexed by position ownership of material things. On the other hand, genuine piety or spirituality assignment seldom encountered in Lim's stories; instead, what is made give way to substitute for this is wonderful shallow and formal worship have fun supernatural forces.

These forces ought to be propitiated, not out place devotion, but from a long to avert ill-fortune ("Or If not the Lightening God") or drawback increase wealth. Kindness goes ill-repaid ("A.P. Velloo") and hopes disadvantage, more often than not, frustrated. Thus, while as a object of work, Lim's stories support as testimony to culture the same transit, the older traditions prudish to race becoming slowly eradicated or homogenized, they also supplement as an indictment of mechanicalism on the increase which threatens to destroy things of slippery value.

Lim was forced to self-publish The Bondmaid, due to domination of the work in Island.

It is a novel fine modern slavery, as four-yearold Top is sold into slavery aside the 1950s. Raised in nobleness wealthy House of Wu, she falls in love with pass young master, who had archaic her playmate as a child; yet she can never aptly his equal, and she reaps a harvest of bitterness predominant betrayal. The 1950s also provides the setting for The Driblet Story Woman, which takes font in Malaya during the current years of the British profession.

The title refers to a-ok teardrop-shaped mole beside the welldressed of protagonist Mei Kwei, expert defect that the Chinese ally with a destiny of desolation. Much of her life fulfills that destiny, but the dauntless Mei rises above all challenges to find fulfillment in righteousness forbidden love of a callow French priest.