Setting: Unpolished Gem

This book, a memoir of an Asian-Australian lawyer and writer, is about her childhood in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia. The author, Alice Pung, was born in 1981 a month after her parents arrive from a refugee camp in Thailand. 

She begins her story a few weeks before she is born, when her parents and grandmother arrive in Melbourne in 1981 with an empty suitcase. Alice vividly describes her family's wonder at the perfection of Australia, compared to the terror and poverty of Cambodia, where the dictator Pol Pot had recently ruled. "It is a country where no one walks like they have to hide. From the top floor of the Rialto building my parents see that the people below amble in a different manner, and not just because of the heat. No bomb is ever going to fall on them. No one pissing in the street, except of course in a few select suburbs. No lepers. No Khmer Rouge-type soldiers dressed like black ants prodding occupants of the Central Business District into making a mass exodus to Wangaratta" (Pung, 9).

Alice also describes her immigrant family's fascination with the wealth of the new country, where anything could be bought and made useful. "Baskets for two dollars, colourful pink and red ones, in which to wash the lettuce. Plastic neon-yellow chopstick-holding baskets, plastic racks, plastic bedside tables for thirty dollars each to be assembled at home. Bright prints of Vietnam scenery on shaped plastic to hang on the walls of your house. Colourful floor mats with little animals printed on them. And squeaking sandals for the children, sandals at every corner of the house, so guests do not need to walk around in bare feet" (Pung, 17).

This book, although I haven't gotten very far, seems to be full of good imagery and description. Every sentence reveals a new detail about her childhood, creating colorful scenes in our minds and leaving no questions about her family's first few years in Melbourne.