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.
Black Inc. Books
Asian-Australians have often been written about by outsiders, as outsiders. In this collection, compiled by award-winning author Alice Pung, they tell their own stories with verve, courage and a large dose of humour. These are not predictable tales of food, festivals and traditional dress. The food is here in all its steaming glory - but listen more closely to the dinner-table chatter and you might be surprised by what you hear.
Here are tales of leaving home, falling in love, coming out and finding one's feet. A young Cindy Pan vows to win every single category of Nobel Prize. Tony Ayres blows a kiss to a skinhead and lives to tell the tale. Benjamin Law has a close encounter with some angry Australian fauna, and Kylie Kwong makes a moving pilgrimage to her great-grandfather's Chinese village.
Here are well-known authors and exciting new voices, spanning several generations and drawn from all over Australia. In sharing their stories, they show us what it is really like to grow up Asian, and Australian.
The original collection that gave rise to the bestselling Growing Up series.
Contributors include: Shaun Tan, Jason Yat-Sen Li, John So, Annette Shun Wah, Quan Yeomans, Jenny Kee, Anh Do, Khoa Do, Caroline Tran and many more.
Black Inc. Books