Interview #185 — Alice Pung
by Alan Weedon
Alice Pung is an award-winning writer based in Melbourne. She is the bestselling author of the memoirs Unpolished Gem and Her Father’s Daughter, and the essay collection Close to Home, as well as 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. One Hundred Days is her most recent novel.
Alice Pung spoke to Alan Weedon—days before the birth of her second child—about the invisibility of urban Australian poverty, the cliches of Melbourne’s west, and the tireless work of migrant parents.
This interview was first published as part of Liminal’s first print edition, in 2019.
I want to begin with our shared narratives: We both grew up around Footscray and Braybrook in Melbourne’s west, both in states where we didn’t have much material wealth. What was it like for you growing up in ’90s Braybook—a suburb that still tops the stats in being one of Victoria’s poorest suburbs?
Yeah, and people think we’re exaggerating… for me, Braybrook was a place surrounded by factories you know so most people or many people lived close with in a factory—our backyard was a carpet factory. But you don't know it because you live it.
Until I was about fifteen, and I went to a private school in Essendon and the bus would pick us up and you could see the surroundings change the trees get bigger. You know, we're both artistically inclined. As a kid, you don't have the words for it but I knew there was something more attractive about Essendon and about that school because when you come home and you see the carpet factories again you think: Oh, my world is kind of ugly and I never noticed it before with the barbed wire fences.
There are paradoxes living in Braybrook, Sunshine and Footscray where you could be incredibly poor money-wise but you could be incredibly wealthy fashion-wise if your Aunty sewed for Country Road. She could have a bunch of Country Road labels left over, bits of off-cut fabric where she could fashion them into 200-dollar slacks in about a day... if, you know, she's kind enough to make you a birthday present. And, if you had relatives who imported things from overseas, you could have your fake Gucci handbag—so you can look incredibly well-heeled and incredibly affluent even though you live in the concrete commission house and you go back and have, what we call, “ill-gotten gains”. To which then people say ‘aww, those Asians… they're so dodge’.
I’m guessing there would’ve been times where you had to mute parts of your personal history once you moved to that private school in Essendon?
Yeah you do. My parents sent me there so that I would mix with a different class of people—the daughters and sons of lawyers and doctors and things because they thought, well, that that is how you shift class, but I just ended up hanging around my Turkish and Vietnamese friends, or my friend Jennifer whose Dad owned the line-dance restaurant in Werribee. We got each other because we knew we wouldn't see each other after school: Ozlem helped to look after the kids and Jennifer worked at the restaurant.
Around other girls, you’d hear them talking about going to the formal and how they'd brought these frocks for $400 and you think, ‘oh yeah, we could be pleasant to each other’ but there's no way we could be genuine friends. You can't share your life with these people, on a real basis without them feeling a bit sorry for you or with you envying their advantages in life. That's what it's like being a teenager. You know you always want stuff you can't have and you're always thinking that everyone's watching you, so you hang around a group where you don't feel self-conscious at all. And for me it was with the migrant kids.
Around other girls, you’d hear them talking about going to the formal and how they'd brought these frocks for 400-dollars and you think, “oh yeah, we could be pleasant to each other” but there's no way we could be genuine friends.
You can't share your life with these people, on a real basis without them feeling a bit sorry for you or with you envying their advantages in life.
Prior to this interview, we were talking about Greta Gerwig’s film Lady Bird. After sitting with the film, it really had me reflecting on my upbringing and the distance I now have from that. While the main thrust of the film was ruminating on a mother-daughter relationship, for me, I thought it was a great parable of social mobility through education. Did you find yourself dredging up your past history when watching the film?
Yeah. As a young adult I did when I went to university things really shifted and there weren't many people from the western suburbs studying at Melbourne Law School so I was a novelty—like an eternal international student that could speak English with a better accent.
I was people's cultural foray into a world they didn't know. At that time, a wonderful thing was beginning to happen starting with Madonna: She was beginning to adopt oriental aesthetics and then people got into Japanese culture and everyone wanted a Japanese girlfriend. Suddenly all these terrible things that were imposed on my culture started to shift in reverse for me at university, so I thought: I'm pretty cool. And I did play up that narrative… the one where you’re tough and from the western suburbs.
Yeah, there’s that certain toughness, or “street” sensibility. How would you describe the perceptions of Melbourne’s west to people who don’t know anything about it?
When my first book [Unpolished Gem] came out there were people who'd read the book and they'd say, “We'd really love to visit Footscray now, but should I wear a bum bag and keep my possessions inside?” And then you’d have other comments like “oh I wonder if it's gotten better or is it still as rough as ever”.
Another example was having a whole influx of teenagers coming into my Dad’s Retravision store. You know, Dad put up a shoplifting alert, but they turned out to be students from the other side of the river whose teachers took them on an excursion to see what it was like in the West. He was really proud that they'd come. But the west is exoticised isn't it? Nobody really crosses the river.
I’m interested in that exoticization narrative, because it's almost this double othering, which I think is peculiar to the progressive aspects of growing up in Victoria where there’s a tender, but pitiful perception of your experience.
Yeah, the model minority. I especially get this from well-intentioned liberal people who are curious as to why my Mum can’t speak English… she was in the shed working for 20 years. But then there are also perceptions of the “dole bludgers” that have been there for three generations and “can’t get off their arses”. So these white Australians unfortunately are demonised for their “slackness”, and are perceived as all sorts of negative things. In the west, the hipsters want to live near the Indians, Asians and Sudanese… but they don't want to live near disgruntled other white people.
That reminds me of a line in your Monthly piece where you talk about a disgruntled white person being really angry at a new Toyota Camry being parked in your driveway.
Oh yeah. They scratched it with a set of keys, because you didn’t see us for ten years. In our Braybrook house my Mum just worked in the garage my Dad went to work in Footscray where people had no time to socialise anything at all.
Totally! In contrast to more comfortable suburbs, you don’t have a kind of overt community glue where you can close off a street for a fête.
No that doesn't happen, that doesn't happen in the west. Not when you're really poor people don’t. But then ten years later if they see a new Toyota Camry, and they have no idea what your family's been up to because they barely see you, they think the government is giving these refugees money or “stuff”...
In the west, the hipsters want to live near the Indians, Asians and Sudanese… but they don't want to live near disgruntled other white people.
And even after ten years, you're still cast as “the refugees”.
That's true that after ten years you're not the rivals...
The idea of white working class disgruntlement is hard not to ignore with the shadow of Trump, and Pauline Hanson. After Hanson left politics the first time around, I felt as though there was this mainstream presumption that that kind of overt Australian racism went away… did you feel it ever went away?
No. Did you ever feel it went away?
Not really, my entire childhood was spent under Howard.
Yeah, no it didn’t really go away. His whole leadership was about “mateship white Australia”, the citizenship test and that kind of thing.
In Unpolished Gem I found it interesting that you re-cast Howard’s idea of the “battler” with that of your Mother, someone who I imagine, would be a lot different to the kind of white working-class person Howard envisioned.
Yeah, she was still a refugee, not a “battler”.
I gather there’s been plenty of times where you’ve been invited to participate in things where you’ve been highlighted as the model minority?
Oh yeah very often, especially by well-intentioned liberal people—they’re often curious as to why my Mum doesn’t speak English… but she was working in the shed for 20 years.
Both you and I grew up with Asian mothers, and it’s ridiculous to think about how tirelessly they worked in order to put us into a position to “succeed”. At the same time, every misstep or other bit of that journey—where you don’t exactly match up to their vision—brings disappointment or shame… How did you navigate that double narrative growing up where you’re told you’re the best and worst in the same breath?
It's a paradox you have to live with, but as an adult I think I make more concessions because even though my Mum told me to do certain things like go to university or to become a lawyer, both my parents never finished high school. At times I discounted their advice because I thought: You don't know what you're talking about. This is a dream to you. You've never done it yourself. They just wanted me to be the first in the family to do it, which meant that they also had no idea about the specifics of things—they just wanted you to become an engineer, lawyer, or doctor.
Of course, it’s important to note here that Cambodia’s Pol Pot regime was the reason why your parents had their educations cut short—and thus escaped to Australia. As you’ve grown older, are you able to identify moments from your childhood where that trauma manifested?
So my dad would never let us play with plastic bags when we were growing up because he'd seen people get killed by them. That's how people were executed… And also he did funny things when I was growing up where we never had sharp knives in the house because Dad would always file them until they were more like spoons ’cause he knew knives could kill.
One example that really stood out to me was from when he sent us to Taekwondo lessons. I hated it. One of my sisters, Alina, persisted until she got a black belt. So she's pretty good. So we all went to watch her do her grading and she broke a piece of wood in half with her hand. I thought: “Woah, Alina knows Taekwondo!” But my dad just paled and he looked quite angry. I thought, “Oh okay you sent her to these lessons for over half a decade and now you think she's not feminine enough?”
I thought it was gendered but afterwards he said, “Oh that just reminded me of the Khmer Rouge children—they killed adults and they were brutal”. So when my sister smacked a piece of wood in half I think it triggered memories of children killing adults and family members for him.
As your parents are getting older are they opening up about that trauma or is it still very much downplayed?
Oh they've always talked about it. Even as a four-or-five-year-old you’d have dinner and they would talk about their friend needle who was so good with the sewing machine, and then they would say “oh too bad she got smashed”.
And it was one of those things said in passing!?
Yeah. I’ve always grown up with it, and I’ve never felt traumatised by their stories. I did feel disturbed by their irrational responses to things like Alina’s Taekwondo grading. My other sister had a blood nose once so my dad called an ambulance because he thought she was bleeding to death… Meanwhile my Mum was so angry and so livid, saying “we don't have ambulance insurance—it’s a thousand bucks!”
It was the same for me, too.
Yeah, the whole: “Just make sure you’re half dead before you arrive”.
What’s interesting now is that paradigm of care has shifted. In many ways you’ve become the independent daughter your parents aspired you to be. What’s it like now that they’re no longer having to look after you 24/7?
I found this went we went on a trip to Japan with them with my husband Nick and our son recently. I suddenly I realised how vulnerable they’d be if they missed a train connection with us. I think they realised that shift then, too. I think they felt both proud and anxious that they were having to be looked after, and that we were capable of that. That there was a switch... does that make sense? This was a lot different to the last time I travelled with them when I was 13 child and they did everything for us.
A lot’s changed since you were 13, and for me what I find the most interesting shift is how swiftly Asian culture has gentrified in that time. In Unpolished Gem you talked about how coming from Cambodian or Chinese heritage was something to be played down… now we’re in a time where a film like Crazy Rich Asians has mainstream release. Have you given much thought to this curious development in the time since that book was released?
Yeah and it's just been 10 years. Here's a great example. I work near Melbourne’s “Paris End” of Collins Street—the posh end basically—and that's where my work is, the Fair Work Commission. Ten years ago I used to stand outside the designer stores, look at the design of the coats, and try to memorise the seam patterns. The shopkeepers would know exactly what I was up to: I’d be the “Asian” person up to no good.
But now, the doors are always open, full of predominantly rich Chinese Asians buying up at Hermés. These stores’ signage is in Chinese, and we’re no longer the workers trying to rip off these designers… instead these brands are creating collections for the children of outworkers! So when I’m talking down this part of Collins Street I think, “you can’t look down on us anymore”.
How do you practise self-care?
I try and get enough sleep, go for long walks, spend plenty to time with my family, eat regular meals, and write lots of letters.
What does being Asian-Australian mean to you?
When I visit schools to give talks, it means I get to show students tht this is what an authors looks like—I’d never had an Asian-Australian writer visit when I was in school, so on a personal level I understand the significance and privilege of the position. I’m also really excited about younger Asian Australian writers and of course, Liminal, and proud of writers like Hoa Pham and Tom Cho, who were and are real trailblazers.
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Interview and photographs by Alan Weedon