With her loving depiction of the Pungs in Unpolished Gem, Alice effectively argues that within Chinese culture there is nothing more important than family-and family begins with a loving marriage. This devotion is present within Kuan and Kien’s relationship as well, and Alice comes from a long line of successful marriages. The dangerous chemicals that Kien works with blacken her fingers and eat away at her skin, and Alice is left with a lasting sense of guilt over her parents’ devotion to the betterment of her life. Kuan works hard as the owner and operator of a local electronics store-which he “builds up from scratch”-and Kien spends countless hours making gold jewelry in the family’s garage. Kuan and Kien, Alice’s parents, are determined to start their own family away from the violence and destruction of Cambodia, and the sacrifices they continue to make after arriving in Australia reflect this same dedication to family.
Alice begins her story in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where her parents and her paternal grandmother and aunt walk across three countries on foot to escape a state-sponsored genocide. The value of family is well established within Alice Pung’s memoir, Unpolished Gem, and it drives the narrative throughout the book.
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