The personal is political: Revisiting "english" and "homeland" by reading Shirley Geok-Lin Lim's Hong Kong poetry

In the 1970s, when Carol Hanisch proposes that "the personal is political, "she emphasizes how all personal issues - including challenges, choices, and behaviors - carry their political imports. Therefore, while we examine individual experiences, we can expect to understand the historical and political contexts of the public, and seek for solutions to problems if there is any. In the studies of Oversea Chinese, we observe how Shirley Geok-lin Lim, a Chinese Malaysian who has become naturalized in the United States, represents an untypical diasporic prototype as she is often traveling from one place to another and in an "in-between"position, different from traditional paradigms of settlement or diaspora. This essay focuses the analysis on the usage of English and the concept about homeland to read poetry written by Shirley Lim in Hong Kong, so as to investigate how her personal experience could bespeak the political and cultural identifications for people in Hong Kong.