Unpolished Gem: My Mother, My Grandmother, and Me [Mass Market Paperback]

Alice Pung (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 27, 2009

After Alice Pung's family fled to Australia from the killing fields of Cambodia, her father chose Alice as her name because he thought their new country was a Wonderland. In this lyrical, bittersweet debut memoir-already an award-winning bestseller when it was published in Australia-Alice grows up straddling two worlds, East and West, her insular family and the Australia outside. With wisdom beyond her years and a keen eye for comedy in everyday life, she writes of the trials of assimilation and cultural misunderstanding, and of the tender but fraught relationships between three generations of women trying to live the Australian dream without losing themselves. Unpolished Gem is a moving, vivid journey about identity and the ultimate search for acceptance and healing, delivered by a writer possessed of rare empathy, penetrating insight, and undeniable narrative gifts.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

I was doomed, early on, to be a word-spreader, Pung writes, and her special burden was to tell these stories that the women of my family made me promise never to tell a soul. The stories are not of scandalous secrets or shocking revelations, but of the struggles faced by three generations of Asian women as they settle in a culturally Western country. Pung, a lawyer, recounts the journey her family made over the decades—from China, her grandparents' birthplace, to Cambodia, where her parents are born, through Vietnam and Thailand to Australia where, one month after their arrival, Pung is born. In retelling her grandmother's stories, the imagined is rendered credible; Pung captures her form of magic, the magic of words that became movies in mind. In recollecting her own story, Pung loses that magic in the ordinariness of adolescence, and as the family moves toward achieving the Great Australian Dream, it passes through familiar stages—the hard work of both parents, the distance created between generations and the anxieties suffered by the younger generation (I had done everything right, and I had turned out so wrong). The non-European-immigrant-girl-grows-up story is a familiar one to American readers. What's new about Pung's book is the Australian setting. That twist of focus reveals how more alike than different the experience is. (Jan.)
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From Booklist

Pung’s edifying memoir illuminates not only the cultural clash experienced by her Cambodian family after they landed in Australia in 1980 just before she was born but also her personal travails as a young woman coping with a mother and grandmothers steeped in centuries-old traditions. Throughout her school years, Alice struggles to cope with being the different one, while within her own family, she is under constant pressure to be an example to her younger siblings. She regrets not being a boy because her grandmothers hint that all that matters for girls is that they can make a good pot of rice, have a pretty face, and be fertile. She achieves the usual Asian High-Achiever marks in high school, but suffers from depression her senior year, barely able to appear in public. She passes her university exams, but even in college she feels pressure to conform to her parents’ expectations, and feels as though she’s wearing a mask. Pung offers thoughtful commentary on the immigrant experience, seen through the eyes of one who has successfully emerged. --Deborah Donovan

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 282 pages
• Publisher: Plume; Original edition (January 27, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452290007
• ISBN-13: 978-0452290006
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #975,927 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars UNpolished Gem? Yes, February 18, 2009

By 

Faye Quam Heimerl - Book Editor "Quam Editorial" (Westminster, CO) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Unpolished Gem: My Mother, My Grandmother, and Me (Mass Market Paperback)

In UNPOLISHED GEM, author Alice Pung successfully describes what it means to be sentenced to be a first-generation daughter born to Chinese immigrants in Australia. But, given the similarities of her experiences to, say, the protagonist's in Amy Tan's THE JOY LUCK CLUB, she could just as well been born in the United States. As in THE JOY LUCK CLUB, Pung is expected to adhere to traditional Chinese customs without benefit of being surrounded by Chinese culture. She clearly relates the turmoil, guilt, and depression this causes her. She also shares her relatives' expressions and behavior-endearingly so.

Pung less successfully ties her life to her mother and grandmother's lives, to their upbringing and experiences in China and war ravaged Cambodia. Her intellectual connection to them comes through, especially when she tells of her mother's jewelry making career, but her emotional/heart connection does not. Her youth may be responsible for this lack; she was born in 1980. (Youth is not a criticism.)

I encourage Pang to revisit this story ten years from now. I suspect she will see greater opportunities to polish her story, opportunities she can't possibly imagine now. I look forward to seeing what she writes then.

Do I suggest you read UNPOLISHED GEM? For entertainment? Sure. As an example of a well developed memoir? No.

4.0 out of 5 stars Great story-telling, November 28, 2011

By 

SHR (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Unpolished Gem: My Mother, My Grandmother, and Me (Mass Market Paperback)

I was hooked by the time I had read the prologue. I loved the way this explored what it means to be an immigrant in Australia and the way offspring of immigrants have to try to exist in the cultural realities of where they live and where they come from. Although this occasionally read as a not quite truthful account of past events, it also had a real honesty and poignancy, as the emotion attached to the events and memories always felt genuine. There was a lot of humour in the book, I laughed a lot and then stopped to examine what had actually just been said, to discover that it was really quite sad; I found this to be very effective - it made the material accessible instead of confronting, which I like as it enables me to ponder as much or as little as I like. It was a testament to how much I was involved in Alice's life and her story-telling, that when the book was finished I wondered if there were more - I would definitely have picked up a sequel if there had been one available.

3.0 out of 5 stars A brave self-interpretation, December 17, 2010

By 

Red Fox (Perth, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Unpolished Gem: My Mother, My Grandmother, and Me (Mass Market Paperback)

Alice Pung - lawyer, author, raconteur, all round great storyteller: what a huge disappointment to her mother! With a mix of humour and sadness Alice gives us her first hand insight into the plight of the first generation migrant - through the uncertain years of adolescence and early adulthood, trying to find her place in the world - in an adopted country and a society with radically different values and expectations to those of world her parents brought with them when they fled Cambodia.

Looming large is Alice's domineering mother - though when the traditional Asian expectation that she will control every aspect of Alice's life, meets the traditional Aussie expectation of self-reliance things are bound to get ugly. When the breathtaking double standard of her parent's cultural attitudes to women is added to the mix, it's no wonder that Alice experiences paranoia and begins to question her sanity.

Until enters the 'unpolished gem' of the title - an interracial relationship which forces her parents to confront some of their deeply held attitudes. This very personal story is excellently told, it had me feeling frustrated then happy in turns as Alice gradually plucks up the courage to... well, you'll have to read it yourself!