Unpolished Gem

by Alice Pung. Black Inc, 2006.
Cover photography Narelle Autio. Cover design Thomas Deverall.

Alice Pung is the daughter of Chinese refugees from Cambodia. She was born only months after they arrived in Melbourne from a refugee camp in Thailand.

She was called Alice after Alice in Wonderland because her parents thought Australia was ‘wonderland’. She calls them the ‘wahsers’ because they “Wah!” at so much that astonishes them from the vast array of things to buy, to the red and green lights that drivers and pedestrians actually obey -

“We wait for the Mao Ze Dong man to disappear before we move. He stops everything.”

Some of it is laugh-out-loud funny.

It is ironic that the pain sets in as the prosperity grows. When their frantic desire to succeed it is realized, then they have trouble stopping and enjoying their success. At 17 Alice has a mental breakdown, as if she is a mirror of all that afflicts her now successful community.Her story gives a vivid insight into the Chinese community of Footscray and through it, an understanding of what it is like to grow up part of an extended Chinese family in Australia.

- Ines.