{"id":2315,"date":"2009-05-08T12:14:12","date_gmt":"2009-05-08T16:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookdragon.si.edu\/?p=2315"},"modified":"2022-03-17T23:22:52","modified_gmt":"2022-03-18T03:22:52","slug":"unpolished-gem-my-mother-my-grandmother-and-me-by-alice-pung","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/unpolished-gem-my-mother-my-grandmother-and-me-by-alice-pung\/","title":{"rendered":"Unpolished Gem: My Mother, My Grandmother, and Me by Alice Pung"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2009\/05\/Unpolished-Gem.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-large wp-image-29711\" src=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2009\/05\/unpolished-gem.jpg\" alt=\"Unpolished Gem\" width=\"128\" height=\"193\" \/><\/a>Already a many-time-many-variety award-winner in her native Australia, <a href=\"http:\/\/alicepung.com\/blog\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Alice Pung<\/a>&#8216;s debut memoir arrives Stateside filled with humor and bittersweet grace. Born one month after her family arrived in Melbourne, Australia, after fleeing the killing fields of Cambodia, Pung&#8217;s father chooses her name for &#8220;a story translated from English that he read in his youth, about an enchanted land in which a little girl finds herself. This new daughter of his 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. She will grow up not ever knowing what it is like to starve.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Surrounded by her extended family (ever growing), like many children of new immigrants, Pung grows up treading between the new culture into which she is born and the sometimes conflicting traditions most comfortable for her parents and grandparents. She comes of age, trying to please both her distant mother and her indulgent paternal grandmother. As the oldest child \u2013 and a girl even! \u2013 she is reminded again and again of the Cambodian saying, &#8220;A girl is like white cotton wool \u2013 once dirtied it can never be clean again. A boy is like a gem \u2013 the more you polish it, the more it shines.&#8221; In spite of a debilitating period of depression near high school&#8217;s end, Pung manages to shine and more.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Readers<\/strong>: Young Adult, Adult<\/p>\n<p><strong>Published<\/strong>: 2009 (United States)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Already a many-time-many-variety award-winner in her native Australia, Alice Pung&#8216;s debut memoir arrives Stateside filled with humor and bittersweet grace. Born one month after her family arrived in Melbourne, Australia, after fleeing the killing fields of Cambodia, Pung&#8217;s father chooses her name for &#8220;a story&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29711,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,225,10205,797,107,20,136,31],"tags":[2503,83,6608,58,10,135,25,129,2504],"class_list":["post-2315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adult-readers","category-australian","category-australian-asian","category-cambodian","category-memoir","category-nonfiction","category-southeast-asian","category-young-adult-readers","tag-alice-pung","tag-assimilation","tag-bookdragon","tag-coming-of-age","tag-family","tag-grandparents","tag-immigration","tag-mother-daughter-relationship","tag-unpolished-gem"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.14 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Unpolished Gem: My Mother, My Grandmother, and Me by Alice Pung - BookDragon<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/unpolished-gem-my-mother-my-grandmother-and-me-by-alice-pung\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Unpolished Gem: My Mother, My Grandmother, and Me by Alice Pung - BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Already a many-time-many-variety award-winner in her native Australia, Alice Pung&#8216;s debut memoir arrives Stateside filled with humor and bittersweet grace. Born one month after her family arrived in Melbourne, Australia, after fleeing the killing fields of Cambodia, Pung&#8217;s father chooses her name for &#8220;a story...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/unpolished-gem-my-mother-my-grandmother-and-me-by-alice-pung\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-05-08T16:14:12+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-03-18T03:22:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2009\/05\/Unpolished-Gem.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1028\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@SmithsonianAPA\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Unpolished Gem: My Mother, My Grandmother, and Me by Alice Pung - BookDragon","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/unpolished-gem-my-mother-my-grandmother-and-me-by-alice-pung\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Unpolished Gem: My Mother, My Grandmother, and Me by Alice Pung - BookDragon","og_description":"Already a many-time-many-variety award-winner in her native Australia, Alice Pung&#8216;s debut memoir arrives Stateside filled with humor and bittersweet grace. 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