“Poignant, provocative, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, Pung’s rollicking tale of two worlds is not to be missed.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) 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.
Asian - Australians have often been written about by outsiders, as outsiders. In this collection, compiled by award - winning author Alice Pung, they tell their own stories with verve, courage and a large dose of humour. These are not predictable tales of food, festivals and traditional dress. The food is here in all its steaming glory - but listen more closely to the dinner - table chatter and you might be surprised by what you hear. Here are tales of leaving home, falling in love, coming out and finding one's feet. A young Cindy Pan vows to win every single category of Nobel Prize. Tony Ayres blows a kiss to a skinhead and lives to tell the tale. Benjamin Law has a close encounter with some angry Australian fauna, and Kylie Kwong makes a moving pilgrimage to her great - grandfather's Chinese village. Here are well - known authors and exciting new voices, spanning several generations and drawn from all over Australia. In sharing their stories, they show us what it is really like to grow up Asian, and Australian. Contributors include: Shaun Tan, Jason Yat - Sen Li, John So, Annette Shun Wah, Quan Yeomans, Jenny Kee, Anh Do, Khoa Do, Caroline Tran and many more.
Laurinda is an exclusive school for girls. At its secret core is the Cabinet, a trio of girls who wield power over their classmates - and some of their teachers. Entering this world of wealth and secrets is Lucy Lam, a scholarship girl with sharp eyes and a shaky sense of self. As she watches the Cabinet at work, and is courted by them, Lucy finds herself in a battle for her identity and integrity.
From one of Australia’s most celebrated authors comes a powerful mother-daughter drama that explores the fault lines between love and control, pairing the claustrophobic intensity of Room and My Year of Rest and Relaxation with the youthful angst of Freshwater. Sixteen and pregnant, Karuna finds herself trapped in her mother’s Melbourne public housing apartment for one hundred days awaiting the birth of her child—and her mother’s next move in a shocking power struggle over who will raise the baby. To fill the seemingly endless hours of her imprisonment, she writes to her unborn child, determined that her baby will know the truth, no matter what happens. Karuna’s pregnancy is the result of a heady act of independence, lust, and defiance that happened in a moment of freedom from her overprotective mother. In reaction to her daughter’s recklessness, Karuna’s mother locks her inside their apartment to her to make sure she can’t get into any more trouble. While postpartum confinement is a tradition in many cultures, is Karuna’s an act of love—or emotional abuse? As the birth approaches, Karuna and her mother repeatedly trip the fault lines between love and control. And somehow, despite their battles, Karuna recognizes her mother’s love in even the strangest of behaviors. At times tense and unnerving, One Hundred Days illuminates the pain, confusion, and thrill of growing up and the overwhelming desire of adults to protect the children they
A brilliant collection from one of Australia's leading writers Close to Home brings together Alice Pung’s most loved writing, on topics such as migration, family, art, belonging and identity. Warm, funny, moving and unfailingly honest, this is Alice at her best – an irresistible pleasure for fans and new readers alike. In 2006, Alice Pung published Unpolished Gem, her award-winning memoir of growing up Chinese-Australian in Melbourne’s western suburbs. Since then, she has written on everything from the role of grandparents to the corrosive effects of racism; from the importance of literature to the legacy of her parents’ migration from Cambodia as asylum seekers. In all of this, a central idea is home: how the places we live and the connections we form shape who we become, and what homecoming can mean to those who build their lives in Australia. ‘Most people have an idea of home as a place of comfort and safety. But it is more than that. Your home is a place where your suffering can take shelter.’ —Alice Pung ‘A beautiful book brimming with rich thoughts and intimate details ... Pung’s writing celebrates who we are, where we’ve come from and the shape of things to come. ★★★★★.’ —The AU Review ‘A warm, wide-ranging selection ... Pung’s writing is crisp and colourful.’ —The Age ‘Mixes vivid personal stories with a sharply nuanced examination of Australia’s knotty, turbulent race history.’ —The Weekend Australian ‘Alice Pung is a gem. Her voice is the real thing.’ —Amy Tan
I keep coming back to John Marsden. What makes him so fascinating to me is that he approaches writing for young adults with a whole philosophy of what it means to be a teenager – a philosophy that’s embedded in the two schools he runs, but also in his early experiences with mental illness and hospitalisation. His perspective raises interesting questions about YA fiction – how much darkness is allowed, before you are considered a “bad influence”? An original and moving look by award-winning writer Alice Pung at one of her biggest influences – the much-loved and hugely successful writer John Marsden. In the Writers on Writers series, leading authors reflect on an Australian writer who has inspired and fascinated them. Provocative and crisp, these books start a fresh conversation between past and present, shed new light on the craft of writing, and introduce some intriguing and talented authors and their work. Published by Black Inc. in association with the University of Melbourne and State Library Victoria. Alice Pung is an award-winning writer, editor, teacher and lawyer based in Melbourne. She is the bestselling author of Unpolished Gem and Her Father’s Daughter and the editor of the anthologies Growing Up Asian in Australia and My First Lesson. Her first novel, Laurinda, won the Ethel Turner Prize at the 2016 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards.
From an author Amy Tan calls “a gem,” this is a witty, highly acclaimed novel that’s “part Mean Girls, part Lord of the Flies” (The Bulletin, Starred review) about navigating life in private school while remaining true to yourself. Lucy is a bit of a pushover, but she’s ambitious and smart, and she has just received the opportunity of a lifetime: a scholarship to a prestigious school, and a ticket out of her broken-down suburb. Though she’s worried she will stick out like badly cut bangs among the razor-straight students, she is soon welcomed into the Cabinet, the supremely popular trio who wield influence over classmates and teachers alike. Linh is blunt, strong-willed, and fearless—everything Lucy once loved about herself. She is also Lucy’s last solid link to her life before private school, but she is growing tired of being eclipsed by the glamour of the Cabinet. As Lucy floats further away from the world she once knew, her connection to Linh—and to her old life—threatens to snap. Sharp and honest, Alice Pung’s novel examines what it means to grow into the person you want to be without leaving yourself behind. An NPR Best Book of the Year A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year A YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults selection A Texas Tayhas Reading List Selection A Bank Street College of Education and Children’s Book Committee Best Children’s Books of the Year with Distinguished Outstanding Merit "A bracing, enthralling gut-punch and an essential read for teens, teachers, and parents alike." —Kirkus Reviews, Starred review "This daring work with an authentic protagonist teaches important lessons about being yourself while navigating through life."—School Library Journal, Starred review "Lucy’s struggle to find her place and sense of self will have a wide appeal for teen readers and is a welcome addition to the prep-school canon."—Booklist, Starred review "Lyrical, enchanting prose from a narrator with perception so acute she cannot help but share it immerses readers into the very heart of every scene. This is highly recommended for classrooms and libraries [and] a superb choice for book discussion groups and world young adult literature survey courses."--VOYA, Starred review "Part Mean Girls, part Lord of the Flies, and part Special Topics in Calamity Physics, this well-observed and unsentimental novel taps into what is primal within privileged adolescent girls."—The Bulletin, Starred review "Lucy’s narration pulls readers alongside her uncertain navigation of two worlds, and we can’t help but cheer in solidarity as Lucy recognizes assimilation masquerading as inclusion, refuses to back down, and instead embraces who she is."—Horn Book Magazine "In a novel filled with strong visual images, Pung draws a sharp contrast between authenticity and deception, integrity and manipulation. Against the vividly painted backdrops of two very different communities, she traces Lucy’s struggle to form a new identity without compromising the values she holds closest to her heart."—Publishers Weekly
Rosie and Nona are sisters. Yapas. They are also best friends. It doesn’t matter that Rosie is white and Nona is Aboriginal: their family connections tie them together for life. The girls are inseparable until Nona moves away at the age of nine. By the time she returns, they’re in Year 10 and things have changed. Rosie prefers to hang out in the nearby mining town, where she goes to school with the glamorous Selena and her gorgeous older brother, Nick. When a political announcement highlights divisions between the Aboriginal community and the mining town, Rosie is put in a difficult position: will she have to choose between her first love and her oldest friend? Winner, Book of the Year: 2016 NT Literary Awards Highly commended, Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards for Writing for Young Adults Longlisted, 2015 Inky Awards Honour Book, 2015 Children’s Book Council of Australia, Book of the Year for Older Reader Shortlisted, 2016 Territory Read Award ‘A powerful coming-of-age story ... Atkins writes with clear-eyed sensitivity, and although I longed to hear Nona’s voice, its absence is deliberate and effective. Nona & Me is poignant young-adult fiction invoking the complex and often overlooked realities of remote indigenous life.’ —Sydney Morning Herald ‘[Clare Atkins] wrestles with some of this country's most hotly debated political issues with a rare lightness of touch. [Nona & Me is] a convincing portrait of a naive but feverish first love, friendships waxing and waning, and the clash between fitting in and sticking to your values. Above all, there's a warmth and optimism that's hard to resist.’ —Sunday Age ‘This [is a] powerful, beautifully contoured story of cross-cultural friendship.’ —The Weekend Australian
Journey across epic China—through millennia of early innovation to modern dominance. The Shortest History books deliver thousands of years of history in one riveting, fast-paced read. As we enter the “Asian century,” China demands our attention for being an economic powerhouse, a beacon of rapid modernization, and an assertive geopolitical player. To understand the nation behind the headlines, we must take in its vibrant, tumultuous past—a story of “larger-than-life characters, philosophical arguments and political intrigues, military conflicts and social upheavals, artistic invention and technological innovation.” The Shortest History of China charts a path from China’s tribal origins through its storied imperial era and up to the modern Communist Party under Xi Jinping—including the rarely told story of women in China and the specters of corruption and disunity that continue to haunt the People’s Republic today. A master storyteller and exacting historian, Linda Jaivin distills this vast history into a short, riveting account that today’s globally minded readers will find indispensable.
“By turns heartfelt, bitingly funny, and emotionally devastating, Muddy People is not your average coming-of-age tale. I loved this memoir of a young Egyptian-Australian girl growing up Muslim. It's a clear-eyed, fierce debut; every word rings true.”—Nadine Jolie Courtney, author of All-American Muslim Girl A quick, clever debut that is “like the best kind of cake: warm, sweet, a bit nutty—and made with so much love.”—Alice Pung, author of Unpolished Gem Sara is growing up in a family with a lot of rules. Her mother tells her she’s not allowed to wear a bikini, her father tells her she’s not allowed to drink alcohol, and her grandmother tells her to never trust a man with her money. After leaving Egypt when Sara was only six years old, her family slowly learns how to navigate the social dynamics of their new home. Sara feels out of place in her new school. Her father refuses to buy his coworkers a ginger beer, thinking it contains alcohol. Her mother refuses to wear a hijab, even if it would help them connect with other local Muslims. And Sara learns what it feels like to have a crush on a boy, that some classmates are better friends than others, and that her parents are loving, but flawed people who don't always know what's best for her, despite being her strongest defenders. For readers of Patricia Lockwood’s Priestdaddy and Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart, this heartwarming book about family and identity introduces a compelling new voice, with a coming-of-age story that will speak to everyone who’s ever struggled to figure out where they belong.
