Book Reviews

Reviewed by Lynley Capon

Alice Pung's book, Unpolished Gem, My Mother, My Grandmother and Me (2006, Plume, 282 pages), makes a pleasing read. The story, told by the daughter of Chinese-Cambodian refugees settling into life in Australia, refers to the horrors of the Killing Fields under the infamous Pol Pot regime. Yet painful events that the family experienced in Cambodia, and when adjusting to Australia, are shared so endearingly, poetically and wittily that the total story turns surprisingly delightful.

The author's parents, grandmother and an aunt arrived in Melbourne in 1980 along with many other refugees. They had no possessions except for the clothes they wore. Her mother was heavily pregnant with Alice. When the girl was born, her father called her Alice because she “will grow up in this Wonder Land and take for granted things like security, abundance, democracy and the little green man on the traffic lights".

Alice writes about her parents' and grandmother's first excursions into the city of Melbourne and their delight at all the amazing sights, especially the little green man on pedestrian-crossing lights. “As the little Red Man disappears and the little Green Man reappears, the crew hobbles to the other side in beat with the ticking traffic light.... The little Green Man was an eternal symbol of government existing to serve and protect.”

There's a funny incident when the family goes shopping in a supermarket. Having seen animals on many Chinese products advertised in Cambodia, they buy canned meat with cats and dogs on the labels. Only later when seeing TV commercials for pet food do they recognize what they'd eaten. They're amazed that even animals in Australia eat so well. With the Pungs always amazed, Alice refers to them as the “Wah-sers” – they “wah-ed” about everything.

As the newcomers adjust, they're amazed that people in Melbourne amble in a different manner and not just because of the heat. “No bombs about to fall on anyone. No one pissing in the street.... No Khmer Rouge-type soldiers dressed like black ants prodding occupants of the Central Business District into making a mass exodus to Wangaratta. Most people here have not even heard about Brother Number One in Socialist Cambodia and to the uninitiated ears his name sounds like an Eastern European stew: ‘Would you like some Pol Pot? It's made with 100-per-cent fresh-ground suffering.’ ”

At first, the family settles in the suburb of Braybrook, filling a simple house with every plastic knick-knack and feeling wealthy beyond measure. In every deed, they're aware of wanting to be part of the new land and culture. “We are trying to assimilate, to not stand out from the neighbours, to not bring shame to our whole race by carrying over certain habits from the old country, such as growing chickens in the backyard or keeping goats as pets.”

Alice, or Agheare as her mother and grandmother call her, is greatly loved, especially by her grandmother. The girl sleeps in her grandmother’s bed and soon notices tension between her mother and grandmother (her father's mother). She acts as a confidante to both warring females. “They keep all these secrets and tell them to four-year-olds who cannot possibly understand the complicated channels of hatred.... And so I was doomed, early on, to be a word-spreader.”

The grandmother was a wonderful storyteller, and those she tells to Alice reveal what a tough life she led. She tells about the courtship of Alice's parents in the horror times of Pol Pot's regime and about fleeing to Thailand. The author, an able storyteller too, weaves a tale of romance with poetic turns of phrase and leads you on, always entertaining and enthralling with yet more “word-spreading”.

The book covers so many aspects of life that affected most Asian refugees and immigrants of that era – the long hours of hard work by both parents, ostracism at school, different religious and social norms, plus language and skin color always forming barriers.

Over the years, Alice's parents have three more children. With her parents working, Alice becomes a child-minder, cook and housekeeper. Her father does well, becoming a franchisee for Retravision electrical goods, and the family moves into a grand house in Footscray. No longer needing to work drives her mother “crazy".

In Alice's final year of school, with family pressures weighing heavily on her, she too has a nervous breakdown. With counseling and medication, she persists to graduate. About finishing high school, along with other immigrant students, she notes: “That night our parents realised something that probably shook them from their sleeping dream, the semi-dazed dream they entered when they rested from too many taxi-shifts, or when they closed their eyes from the fatigue of opening too many stitched button-holes. They realised that their children were Watchers, just as they were.”

Despite difficulty completing the final months of high school, Alice passes her exams with such high results that she's accepted into law school at Melbourne University, or Mao-Bin U, as her parents called it.“...(their pronunciation made the place sound like a shonky university in China for discarded communists).
All was well, all stereotypes were fulfilled and everything was in its proper place. Onwards towards the Great Australian Dream. You can pass go. You can collect $2,000. You will be going to university.
The crowd in my head did not give me any applause, they just eventually scattered.... it took months for all the scattered thoughts to disappear. They were like vampires, needing my blood to sustain them..., but they would die, and I would live.”

One issue that Alice ponders is the gender inequality in Chinese culture. She struggles against this and her inability to be like other Australian girls and have a boyfriend for fun. “A girl is like white cotton wool – once dirtied, it can never be clean again. A boy is like a gem – the more you polish it, the brighter it shines.”

At university, Alice meets a white Australian boy keen to date her. Using an interior-monologue style, she anguishes over all the problems this involves. She tells herself: “You're his third-world trip or something. He's too broke to go overseas so you're his substitute exotic experience.”

She does go out with him, even introducing him to her parents. He tries everything to fit in and comply with her parents' conditions for their friendship. Although her boyfriend is a vegetarian, he even eats fish to please them.

When dining at a Chinese restaurant, Alice's father says: “This fish reminds me of the Pol Pot years when the starved, dead bodies floated up the river during the flood. I got the job of dragging them to higher, dryer land. We wrapped them up in a dry blanket and me and my mate grabbed on to each end. Every time we tripped, the blanket would get water-soaked and even heavier. Hah hah, so funny! And listen to this -- my mate turns to me and says, ‘Hope you're not going to be this heavy when it's time for me to drag you’, and I say to him, ‘What do you mean when you drag me? I'm going to be the poor soul who will be dragging you!’ ”

Alice says of her father, “...he did not believe in mental images leaving a bitter aftertaste".

No matter what Alice's boyfriend did for her, the inner turmoil she endured made it too hard for her to accept. She says goodbye to him forever when he's home for the holidays.

In concluding, the author recalls getting Easter eggs and a chocolate Easter Bunny when she was seven years old. Rather than eat them, she stored them in a drawer. Weeks later, she decided to eat them, but found the chocolate had melted into the drawer and ants had invaded. All her precious treasure was destroyed. It's a poignant end to a tale so well woven together.

The book may be called Unpolished Gem, but the story inside is well polished and entirely worth reading.