Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.62 AVERAGE
3.62 AVERAGE
medium-paced
This is another semi-autobiological novel. Reading it straight after Street Without a Name I wondered if it might be a bit like reading two very similar books back to back, but boy was I wrong!
.
This is a really beautiful, and moving book about the challenges of growing up as a second generation immigrant, being constantly torn between your families home culture, and the culture of the country you are living in. All this made even worse by all the usual hormonal troubles of puberty, which are hard enough to navigate alone at the best of times.
.
I absolutely loved this book, it's so beautifully written, moving and inspiring. I would absolutely recommend it.
.
This is a really beautiful, and moving book about the challenges of growing up as a second generation immigrant, being constantly torn between your families home culture, and the culture of the country you are living in. All this made even worse by all the usual hormonal troubles of puberty, which are hard enough to navigate alone at the best of times.
.
I absolutely loved this book, it's so beautifully written, moving and inspiring. I would absolutely recommend it.
I could relate a lot to the narrator of this book due to being, as my mother calls it, a third culture child. I was born in Australia though raised in Holland, and the narrator of this book was born in Cambodia and raised in Australia. However, due to her parents being Chinese she was raised in within two cultures. It is true that this book reflects a lot more of the narrator's family, in particular her mother, rather than herself. The quirky anecdotes definitely make it an entertaining and sometimes quite humorous book.
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Minor: Death, Genocide, Blood
Alice Pung is a remarkable Australian talent. I would read just about anything she has written.
reflective
slow-paced
Some great material on the experience of growing up as the child of immigrants in the suburbs of Melbourne. But I didn't get much of a sense of the emotional life of the narrator, and I felt there were issues with pacing and narrative structure.
slow-paced
I am not sure if I think a girl my sister's age should be writing her memoirs. (My sister is turning 28 this year.) Egotistically, I compare people's life experiences to mine, and I don't think I have done anything memoir-worthy yet. I don't think the author of Unpolished Gem has done anything memoir-worthy, either. Basically, she grew up Asian in Australia. That is it.
I have read many books with the "child-of-immigrants-trying-to-assimilate-into-western-culture" storyline (see one I reviewed here). Actually, I live that story. I don't think it can be that different than other people's. But I will get into that later.
I think the story starts strong- perhaps because it is more about her parents and her grandparents than about her. She describes the plight of her mother with empathy- her mother is a strong, intelligent and hard-working woman living in a country where she is completely isolated due to language barriers. She also talks about her grandmother, and her wonderful ability to weave stories with words and gestures and voice inflection.
However, after that, the story goes to Alice herself, and I started to lose interest. It seems like Alice didn't really talk to anyone for much of her life- we rarely hear about her friends, and those that are mentioned only feature peripherally. We don't know much about any of her life that takes place outside her parents' home. Though it seems like she doesn't have much of a life that takes place outside her parents' house. She attends her high school graduation and realizes the only people in school she talks to are other Cambodian/Chinese students. She blames this on her "culture," and the inability for other people to understand it. Also, on her parents' strict curfew. She gets a white boyfriend, whom she breaks up with for reasons that I didn't quite understand. Though she was 18 at the time, so I suppose it is natural to break up with a guy at that age for obscure reasons.
I didn't really love the book. But that said, it looks like Australia doesn't have many books about the immigrant experience in that country, at least based on the newspaper reviews I've seen. In that case, maybe it is an important book.
I have read many books with the "child-of-immigrants-trying-to-assimilate-into-western-culture" storyline (see one I reviewed here). Actually, I live that story. I don't think it can be that different than other people's. But I will get into that later.
I think the story starts strong- perhaps because it is more about her parents and her grandparents than about her. She describes the plight of her mother with empathy- her mother is a strong, intelligent and hard-working woman living in a country where she is completely isolated due to language barriers. She also talks about her grandmother, and her wonderful ability to weave stories with words and gestures and voice inflection.
However, after that, the story goes to Alice herself, and I started to lose interest. It seems like Alice didn't really talk to anyone for much of her life- we rarely hear about her friends, and those that are mentioned only feature peripherally. We don't know much about any of her life that takes place outside her parents' home. Though it seems like she doesn't have much of a life that takes place outside her parents' house. She attends her high school graduation and realizes the only people in school she talks to are other Cambodian/Chinese students. She blames this on her "culture," and the inability for other people to understand it. Also, on her parents' strict curfew. She gets a white boyfriend, whom she breaks up with for reasons that I didn't quite understand. Though she was 18 at the time, so I suppose it is natural to break up with a guy at that age for obscure reasons.
I didn't really love the book. But that said, it looks like Australia doesn't have many books about the immigrant experience in that country, at least based on the newspaper reviews I've seen. In that case, maybe it is an important book.
reflective
medium-paced