A quiet power

Alice Pung was not a natural born writer. As a child she was shy, didn’t feel she had a voice and never had the right words.

Times have changed for Pung. She’s now an award winning writer with 15 books to her name. She’s also a qualified lawyer. Despite her achievements, she’s never forgotten the quiet little girl she once was. Instead, she’s embraced her.

Pung was born in Footscray, Victoria, just weeks after her parents, Kuan and Kien, arrived in Australia after fleeing the killing fields of Cambodia.

Her father named her after Lewis Carroll’s children’s book character Alice, likening his adopted country Australia to a Wonderland.

“As a writer, I remember how it felt to be five years old, eight years old, 12 years old, you know, very distinctly,” she told FW. 

“I’ve got some unsettling things that happened in my childhood, but lots of joys as well. And I guess, as a writer from a diverse background, things are changing in Australia, but there still aren’t as many of us as I’d hoped.”

Growing up with Chinese-Cambodian heritage in Australia, she didn’t see her own life reflected in everyday society.

Illustrator Sher Rill Ng and Alice Pung collaborated on the ‘Millie Mak’ series. Image credit: @theyoungersun on Instagram.

“You never saw people like me in books,” she said.

“I didn’t have much of a voice within my family or within the school because I was very introverted.”

This lack of representation didn’t stop her ability to observe life’s differences.

“I remember being at school and growing up, you’re not conscious of the wider socio-political, economic circumstances surrounding your life,” she said. 

“But you are aware that there are some kids at school who walk around and they take stuff out of bins, half eaten donuts and chip packets and they eat them. You’re aware that everyone calls them bin scabs.”

It’s these little details that the mum-of-three weaves through her titles.  

“I don’t dilute the reality in my books and I guess one of the most beautiful things that’s come out of it is that children from all socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds are aware that they don’t live in their own little bubble,” she said. 

“There are other children out there who are represented, probably quite terribly, in books as just victims and people who are tragic because they have holes in their pants and they eat from bins, but they don’t see the resilience and the humour and just the good naturedness of the childhood, schoolyard dynamic.” 

By capturing these qualities in her work, she hopes to foster change.

“My work has had the most impact on children and young adults because you remember that stage of your life as the period of time where the most number of firsts happened to you –  your first experience of falling in love, your first experience of bullying, your first experience, if you’re unfortunate enough, of racism, and it’s these firsts that are the most memorable,” she said. 

“So when I write for children and young adults, I’m really conscious that this might be the first time they’re coming across these ideas, and the ideas, I hope, have a lasting impact.” 

Pung released her debut novel ‘Unpolished Gem’ in 2006. The memoir won the 2007 Australian Book Industry Award and praise from literary giants like Helen Garner and legendary American author Amy Tan.

“I’m always inspired by women in all industries. But in terms of my artistic career, two women come to mind. The first is my friend Maxine Beneba Clarke,” Pung said. 

“One thing I learned from Maxine is you have to guard your time because it’s precious, and people make demands on it. So she prioritises the things that are most important.”

The second woman on her list is celebrated Australian children’s author Sally Rippin. 

“She’s always looked out for me and she also had three children then who were quite young and she was putting them through school and she told me something really important,” Pung said. 

“She says, ‘I always work around the children, because their childhood happens once, but my books can always happen at any time’.

Pung released her second novel, ‘Her Father’s Daughter’ in 2011. Like her first, it drew critical attention and industry awards.

Two years later, her third novel, ‘Laurinda’ was published. Pung won further acclaim.

She has penned a number of non-fiction works, including her reflective piece on fellow Australian author John Marsden, and her selected writings ‘Close to Home’.

She released her sixth novel, ‘One Hundred Days’ in 2011.

“This is why it’s so important to be quiet and listen to diverse voices and also to the voices of children who are full of joy.”

As a working parent, Pung revealed there’s no such thing as a typical working day.

As well as her literary work, she works as a legal researcher in the area of minimum wages and pay equity.

“I take the kids to school and during the day I work at my day job. Where it gets interesting is after the kids have been put to bed,” she said.

“So about 9.30pm or 10pm I’ll get up from reading them stories and I’ll sit in front of my laptop and then I’ll work for about one and a half hours.” 

She’ll spend the first half an hour on work admin and organising school visits or looking over contracts. Then the next hour is spent writing.

“If I’m not too tired, and sometimes I’m on a roll, it’ll go for two or three hours when I’m really, really lucky,” she said. 

“So I’ll usually go to bed after midnight if I’m really lucky, sometimes it’s 2am because I get the writing day. It’s probably not the healthiest way to live, but it works at this stage of my life.”

Through Pung’s dichotomy of work and life, she’s experienced different ideals of what it means to be a leader and leadership.

“Your quietest child might be that child who is at home looking after seven siblings and is taught to respect adults and taught that when you look adults in the eye, it’s really aggressive and rude, as many Chinese Cambodian girls and boys are taught, so we don’t recognize these levels of leadership,” she said. 

“I’ve seen this with many Asian Australian, wonderful lawyers who never make it to partnership, or never make it very high up because they don’t go out drinking. They might go home and translate pill bottles for their ageing parents. Or they might have a different way of leading, which is introverted.”

She suggested there are learnings to take from this. 

“This is why it’s so important to be quiet and listen to diverse voices and also to the voices of children who are full of joy,” she said. 

“Because when you make decisions for very poor people, for refugees, for immigrants, you take a top down approach, because of this model of leadership that we fostered the most extroverted and the most extroverted people don’t really listen.” 

These days, Pung is focusing on writing children’s books, which she collaborates on with illustrator, Sher Rill Ng.

“Collaboration is so important. I work with a wonderful friend named Sher Rill Ng who is my illustrator,” Pung said.

“She has been just instrumental in the work I produce.”

“I remember feeling deep jealousy for the girls who had stuff like the Sportsgirl skirts or new Barbies and things. So I had to improvise around the house.”

Unlike many illustrators and authors who work separately, Pung and Ng work together from the very inception. 

“When you read our children’s books, sometimes there’ll be pages where there’s no writing, where I trust Sher Rill enough for her illustrations to do the heavy work,” Pung said. 

“In our last picture book, there’s six or seven pages where we just rely on Sher Rill’s talent, and you can’t do that without very close collaboration.”

Pung lists their trilogy series, Millie Mak the Maker, as among her proudest moments.

The books follow Millie and her superpower of making everyday objects into something beautiful. To Pung, they are almost writing to her 10 year old self.

“As a writer, you have to be completely emotionally honest,” she said.

“I remember feeling deep jealousy for the girls who had stuff like the Sportsgirl skirts or new Barbies and things. So I had to improvise around the house.”

She now sees schoolgirls from the same social economic group she once envied following Millie’s lead.

“To see girls from very wealthy private schools wear these homemade tea towel skirts. I thought, wow, Sher Rill and I, we’ve started a movement where people are proud of who they are,” she said.

Image credit: Courtney Brown