Language and Storytelling Theme Analysis

Alice Pung’s memoir, Unpolished Gem, follows her young life growing up in Australia as the daughter of Chinese immigrants from Cambodia. Removed from her Eastern heritage, Alice’s Chinese roots come alive through her grandmother Huyen Thai’s stories of the old country, and it is through these stories that Alice discovers what it means to be Chinese. Her parents are frequent storytellers as well, and Alice often relies on works of literature and films to enhance her writing and convey her feelings and experiences. Alice’s parents name her after Lewis Carrol’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and her own stress-induced mental breakdown coincides with her reading of William Shakespeare’s King Lear, a play in which the title character also descends into complete madness. Stories, especially didactic stories, and the words that make them up are thus central to Alice’s life and experiences. Language and storytelling prove to be powerful ways for Alice to carry her culture and history into the future; however, she also argues that language has the power to divide and exclude. Through Unpolished Gem, Alice ultimately implies that words and stories, for better or worse, have the power to influence and change one’s life.

As a memoir, storytelling is the very foundation of Unpolished Gem, and this is mirrored in the stories that Alice’s grandmother tells. Alice’s grandmother had begun her tradition of storytelling long ago with Alice’s father, Kuan, and his siblings. “And tell them stories she did,” claims Alice, “with each character coming to life as she stretched her face and contorted her mouth, furrowed her brow and brought to life people she liked and people she loathed to battle it out between the heaven and the earth.” Alice’s grandmother is a “brilliant storyteller and conversationalist,” and Alice is brought up with the same tradition. Growing up, Alice shares a queen-sized bed with her grandmother, and each night she entertains and educates Alice through stories of her early life in China and later in Cambodia. Alice claims that her grandmother possess “a form of magic, the magic of words that become movies in the mind.” Alice’s Chinese heritage is made more accessible through her grandmother’s stories. Alice claims that even after her grandmother’s death, she is kept alive by her stories. These stories prove to Alice that there is life before and after her own, and because of this, they are “meant to be a part of [her] forever.” Alice writes, “My grandmother and her stories. What would I do without them? She exerted my existence before I knew I had one—before I was conscious I had a life beyond the present—and she told me my childhood.” To Alice, her life and existence are affirmed and made real through her grandmother’s storytelling.

However, while storytelling frequently brings Alice’s family together, it is language and words that often cause problems within their lives. Alice claims that her grandmother is very good at “putting bones in her words, bones to make the other person choke,” and her sharp words often metaphorically choke Kien, Alice’s mother and Huyen Thai’s daughter-in-law. While Alice’s grandmother’s words are a positive part of Alice’s own life, then, she uses the same voice to make Kien miserable. Kien’s poor relationship with her mother-in-law is further fueled by Alice’s role as a “word-spreader.” Both Alice’s mother and grandmother talk about each other behind the other’s back, and Alice is left helplessly in the middle, forced to tell each woman what the other said about her. Alice is “doomed, early on, to be a word-spreader. To tell these stories that the women of [her] family made [her] promise never to tell a soul.” Inevitably, each time Alice tells the other’s stories, the already strained relationship between her mother and grandmother worsens. Additionally, Kien never really learns English, making communication difficult. Alice writes, “Over the dinner table, she would watch as my father and his children littered their language with English terms, until every second word was in the foreign tongue.” The very language that enables Alice and her family to become part of Australian society is the reason why Kien is an outsider in her own family. Lastly, when Kien brings Alice and her father lunch while at work in the family’s electronics store, their foreign language makes the non-Chinese employees uncomfortable. Alice claims the employees “huddle over the Herald Sun, quietly scoff down their pizza or take-away fried rice and get the hell out of there as fast as possible, since they have no idea whether our yelling is about them or not.” Language here again serves to create a barrier, this time between the Pungs and the other employees. Each of these instances underscore the power contained within stories and language to divide and isolate.

Alice’s father observes that there is more to communication than merely “the strumming and humming of vocal cords,” and this indeed proves to be the case throughout much of Unpolished Gem. For example, while Alice’s mother and grandmother may spend most of their time bickering, they are, ironically, brought together by imported Hong Kong soap operas. The two connect through their shared love of stories, and these quiet hours spent together serve to mend their strained relationship, even if temporarily. From storytelling and movies, to comfortable silences and gossip, Alice ultimately argues the power of language and stories, regardless of the form they may take.