Expounding the Doubtful Points

The youngest of three sons, Wing Tek Lum was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on 11 November 1946 to second-generation Chinese American parents. His mother’s early death while Lum was still in high school is the subject of some of his most emotionally challenging poetry. Lum continued on to Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, where he majored in engineering. His first attempts at poetry writing led him to creative-writing courses at Brown and, eventually, the editorship of the university’s literary magazine. He received his bachelor’s degree in 1969 and moved from Providence to New York City.

One year later, Lum received the prestigious Poetry Center Award (now known as the Discovery/The Nation Award), given every year to four promising poets who have not yet published a collection. Lum spent three years in New York, where he studied at the Union Theological Seminary, eventually taking a master’s degree in divinity in 1973. During this time, he also worked for the Chinese Youth Council in Manhattan’s Chinatown as a social worker. Lum’s years in New York brought him into contact with Frank Chin, an Asian American writer whose outspoken opinions on Asian American literature would influence Lum’s literary work profoundly.

Although Lum’s parents had spoken some Cantonese at home, he had never learned it; this, in turn, limited both his work and his cultural interactions. In 1973, Lum moved from New York to Hong Kong to learn Cantonese. He also continued his community work, this time for the Hong Kong Society for the Deaf. In Hong Kong, Lum found new perspectives on old themes: language,