“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. Pung’s edifying memoir illuminates not only the cultural clash experienced by her Cambodian family after they landed in Australia in 1980 just before she was born but also her personal travails as a young woman coping with a mother and grandmothers steeped in centuries-old traditions. Throughout her school years, Alice struggles to cope with being the different one, while within her own family, she is under constant pressure to be an example to her younger siblings. She regrets not being a boy because her grandmothers hint that all that matters for girls is that they can make a good pot of rice, have a pretty face, and be fertile. She achieves the usual Asian High-Achiever marks in high school, but suffers from depression her senior year, barely able to appear in public. She passes her university exams, but even in college she feels pressure to conform to her parents’ expectations, and feels as though she’s wearing a mask. Pung offers thoughtful commentary on the immigrant experience, seen through the eyes of one who has successfully emerged. --Deborah Donovan “A sophisticated and fiercely intelligent book… There’s something striking on every page."— Helen Garner , author of Postcards from Surfers “Alice Pung is a gem. Her voice is the real thing.”— Amy Tan , bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club   “Revelations about her painful adolescence and bouts with depression are brutally honest and recounted with superlative narrative skills.”— USA Today   "A fascinating book about the place that is known only by the second-generation immigrant—the place between. Alice Pung tells her story with a keen intelligence, an observant precision, and a transformative grace.”— Karen Joy Fowler , bestselling author of The Jane Austen Book Club “Poignant, provocative, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, Pung’s rollicking tale of two worlds is not to be missed.”— Kirkus Reviews (starred review) ALICE PUNG was born in Australia in 1981, one month after her parents migrated from Cambodia. She is now a Melbourne-based writer and lawyer. Introduction In 1980, my father, mother, grandmother, and Auntie Kieu arrived in Australia by plane. They arrived with one suitcase. There was nothing in the suitcase, and the only person who was carrying a heavy load was my mother, because she was eight months pregnant with me. My parents were both born in Cambodia, a Southeast Asian country less than half the size of California and bordered by Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. In 1953, Cambodia gained independence after nearly one hundred years of French colonial rule. My parents lived in the capital, Phnom Penh. During the 1960s and 1970s, Phnom Penh was a beautiful city, with buildings left over from the colonial era, and under the rule of a prince. In the Vietnam War, Cambodia became part of the battlefield. More bombs were dropped on Cambodia by American B-52 bombers than were dropped on Germany during World War II, in an effort to destroy suspected North Vietnamese supply lines. In 1974, the dictator Pol Pot took over Cambodia with his Khmer Rouge army. He ruthlessly imposed an extremist program to reconstruct Cambodia on the communist model of Mao's China. The entire population was forced to work as labourers in one huge federation of collective farms. Anyone in opposition—and all intellectuals, professionals, and educated people were assumed to be—was persecuted or eliminated. Minority groups, victims of the Khmer Rouge's racism, were also victimized, including ethnic Chinese (like my family), Vietnamese, and Thai, as well as Christians, Buddhists, and Chan Muslims. Civilian deaths from executions, disease, exhaustion, and starvation have been estimated at well over two million. This was an epic holocaust. My family walked by foot from Cambodia, across Vietnam, to Thailand. There, they settled in a refugee camp in Thailand for one long, hot year, during which I was conceived. So I was manufactured in Thailand but assemb