My parents survived the Killing Fields of Cambodia and the aftermath of the Vietnam War, so their love for us was always tinged with anxiety, fear, and a large deal of paranoia and control. All of my books are about the complex relationship between parents and their children, and the things we knowingly or unknowingly pass down. I’ve also worked a number of years as a university student counsellor, where the same enduring themes play out in my students’ experiences. So naturally, I am drawn to stories that explore difficult but loving family dynamics.
I wrote...
One Hundred Days
By
Alice Pung
What is my book about?
In a heady whirlwind of independence, lust, and defiance, sixteen-year-old Karuna falls pregnant. Not on purpose, but not entirely by accident, either. Incensed, Karuna’s mother, already over-protective, confines her to their fourteenth-story housing-commission flat, to keep her safe from the outside world – and make sure she can’t get into any more trouble.
One Hundred Days is a fractured fairytale exploring the faultlines between love and control. At times tense and claustrophobic, it is nevertheless brimming with humour, warmth, and character.
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The Books I Picked & Why
Hope Farm
By
Peggy Frew
Why this book?
Hope Farm moved me so much because it conveys the bitter-sweetness of being thirteen, being privy to adults who make terrible choices, and having to adapt to the consequences of those choices. It is about parents who join cults (in this case, a hippy one) and the effects of this on their children. Peggy Frew has such a seductive and captivating way of engrossing the reader in the story through her stunning prose.
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Things Nobody Knows But Me
By
Amra Pajalić
Why this book?
Many years ago, because I’d written a book about my family’s experience surviving the Cambodian genocide, a talented author asked if I would mentor her through writing a book about the aftermath of the Bosnian conflict and her mother’s mental illness. The result of this is Amra Pajalic’s extraordinary memoir Things Nobody Knows about Me. Pajalic writes with raw candour about her mother’s bipolar and psychosis and growing up in the economically depressed suburbs of working-class Australia. Despite the horrors and hardships of having to constantly be an ‘adult’ in the parent-child relationship Amra’s memoir is full of humour, life, and love.
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Unravelling Us
By
Renée McBryde
Why this book?
Renee’s father was in jail for murder, and her mother never got over the shame. This book is about family secrets and how corrosive they can be, and also how a child survives a manipulative mother. I was floored by the wild level of pain a parent could inadvertently bestow on their child, but there is also much grace and love in this memoir.
This book will be available May 2022.
The Joy Luck Club
By
Amy Tan
Why this book?
This is the story of mothers and daughters everywhere but with a Chinese flair. And because I am Chinese, I have to include this beloved book! There is such heart and authenticity in Amy Tan’s intertwined stories of friendship and family. It was the first time I’d read something resembling the sort of relationship I have with my own mother, which my friends at school didn’t understand.
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The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
By
Maxine Hong Kingston
Why this book?
This classic of Asian-American literature is full of fierce women and gentle men, and the first time I understood how powerful a non-linear, semi-mythological collection of stories could be. Maxine Hong Kingston, like Toni Morrison, was not writing to educate a broader readership, but to tell stories relatable to a very specific audience of Asian American readers. For this, I salute her courage and originality.
