Writers from China's diaspora
Sex works for Gerrie Lim - at least in his writing. It was only a year ago that he made waves with the release of his non-fiction best-seller Invisible Trade, about the secretive world of high-end escorts in Asia.
The common thread between it and his latest book, Idol to Icon (launched in August at the Singapore Writers Festival), Lim says, is that 'they underscore my own personal interest in examining subcultures'.
In Idol to Icon, Lim, 46, examines celebrity branding in music, film and fashion, returning once more to the familiar territory of pop culture that he charted in his 1997 debut, Inside the Outsider, a collection of his interviews with musicians such as David Bowie, Patti Smith and Pete Townshend.
'My fixation on pop culture comes from growing up in the 70s in Singapore - a very repressive place in a time of history when pop culture in America and Europe was flourishing and also changing the social-political landscape of the whole world,' he says. 'I saw what was going on over there and I couldn't reconcile that with being forced to get my hair cut by so-called authorities who clearly felt that the male human being should only look one way.'
As a result, Lim left Singapore and stayed away for 20 years. It was time well spent in his second home of Los Angeles, where he graduated with a master's degree in print journalism from the University of Southern California and started writing about entertainment for magazines such as LA Weekly and Playboy.
Being a Chinese- Singaporean was neither an advantage nor a hindrance while reporting in Hollywood, he says. 'Most people I worked with didn't even know where Singapore was. Most of them thought it was a city in China. One publicist kept introducing me as being from Indonesia. Most people assumed I was a native of Los Angeles and were surprised to find out I was actually from another country. Emotionally, I'm very much a native of southern California.'