Shirley Geok-lin Lim

Born in Melaka, Malaysia into a life of poverty, deprivation, parental violence, and abandonment in a culture that, at that time, rarely recognised girls as individuals, Lim had a pretty unhappy childhood. Reading was a huge solace, retreat, and escape for her. Scorned by teachers for her love of English over her "native" tongue, she was looked down upon for her pursuit of English literature. Her first poem was published in the Malacca Times when she was ten. By the age of eleven, she knew that she wanted to be a poet. Lim had her early education at Infant Jesus Convent under the then British colonial education system. She won a federal scholarship to theUniversity of Malaya, where she earned a B.A. first class honours degree in English at University of Malaya. In 1969, at the age of twenty-four, she entered graduate school at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts under a Fulbright scholarship, and received a Ph.D.in English and American Literature in 1973. Lim is married to Charles Bazerman, also a professor and chair of the Education Department at University of California, Santa Barbara.Lim is a professor in the English Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has also taught internationally at theNational University of Singapore, the National Institute Education of Nanyang Technological University, and was the Chair Professor at theUniversity of Hong Kong where she also taught poetry and creative writing. She has authored several books of poems, short stories, and criticism, and serves as editor and co-editor of numerous scholarly works. Lim is a cross-genre writer, although she identifies herself as a poet. Her research interests include: Lim is also recognized as a creative writer. Her first collection of poems, Crossing the Peninsula (1980), received the Commonwealth Poetry Prize. She has also published four volumes of poetry: No Man's Grove (1985); Modern Secrets (1989);Monsoon History (1994), which is a retrospective selection of her work; and What the Fortune Teller Didn't Say (1998). Bill Moyers featured Lim for a PBS special on American poetry, "Fooling with Words" in 1999, and again on the program Now in February 2002. She is also the author of three books of short stories and a memoir, Among the White Moon Faces (1996), which received the 1997 American Book Award for non-fiction. Her first novel, Joss and Gold (Feminist Press, 2001), has been welcomed by Rey Chow as an elegantly crafted tale [that] places Lim among the most imaginative and dexterous storytellers writing in the English language today. She edited/co-edited Asian American Literature; Tilting the Continent: An Anthology of South-east Asian American Writing; and The Forbidden Stitch: An Asian American Women's Anthology which received the 1990 American Book Award.

Do you think that old buildings should be preserved?

hould a city try to preserve its old, historic buildings or destroy them and replace them with modern buildings? Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer. Nowadays, many cities have to deal with a controversial problem that whether a city should preserve its old, historic buildings or destroy them and replace them with modern buildings. I believe that different people will have different opinion. According to my experience, I think we should preserve the old, historic buildings instead of destroy them. I would like to use three following reasons to support my answer. First, the old, historic buildings are the witnesses of history. Although these buildings would take up a lot of spaces, they are the only evidences left in a city which can tell us about the citys history and provide many valuable experiences. These buildings could tell people what happened in the past and what was the past like. From that, people could gain knowledge and experience to contribute to the modern society better. Second, the old, historic buildings represent history, so they could be used for educational purposes. Children can learn history in class, but learning history in a historic structure can provide them a better and more appropriate environment to study, which make children much easier and happier in learning history. It is necessary for children to know about the past, so they can understand better about the modern society. Third, the preserved buildings would offer important clues for archeologists to study the past. Archeologists could find many antiques in these buildings, which could give them very valuable information. It is more advantageous to maintain the preserved buildings well than to destroy them and build new ones. In conclusion, the old, historic buildings should be preserved for the reasons above. First is that they are the witness of the past, then they could teach students many things and last they are the important clues of archeologists.