The inimitable writer Maxine Hong Kingston published a book in 2002 with the title To Be the Poet. … - Shirley Geok-lin Lim

Same topic Authors

Quote of the day

We live charmed lives if we are living in the center of God's will. All the attacks that Satan can hurl against us are not only powerless to harm us, but are turned into blessing on the way.

Shirley Geok-lin Lim

The inimitable writer Maxine Hong Kingston published a book in 2002 with the title To Be the Poet. However, in contrast to the transformatory distinctions Kingston makes between the conditions of being a prose writer and "the poet," my multigenre impulses incline me to a broader transformation: to be a writer.

Book, Conditions, Hong, Titles, Transformation, Transformatory

Same Author Quotes

That desire to reach further is also where I ended my memoir, in 1994 in California, perhaps ironically, looking out to the Pacific and back to Asia, toward the not-yet-written.

Asia, California, Desire, Looking, Perhaps

Sometimes, in my published complaints about not being a writer, I have recalled the prospect - the yearning to be a writer - as it first formed for me.

Firsts, Prospect, Published, Recalled, Sometimes, Yearning

These commonplace categories - wife, mother, housewife, teacher - are in fact teleological referents. They gesture to profound states of being that animate, absorb and saturate the subject, like indelible dyes spilled repeatedly over a plain fabric. No matter if the fabric is sturdy or delicate, translucent or opaque, those dyes will stain. They will color the days and years and life.

Color, Mother, Saturate, Teacher, Teleological

When someone asks me now, "What do you do?" I will be able to say, "I am a writer. "

Able, Ask Me, Asks, Say, Writer

Even my novels offer passages in which the major character is imagined as a writer. In Joss and Gold, Li An is a business writer who edits her company's weekly public relations magazine. And in Sister Swing, Suyin writes human interest stories for a free, local community paper, The Asian Time.

Character, Gold, Local, Swings, Weekly, Writing