Task

Tasks: The Shed by Alice Pung

Close-up of a an old latch of an old wooden door. — Old latch of a main door. Image: scalatore59 / CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Quotations:

Below are some quotations from the text. Explain what the quotations mean and how they add to your understanding of the plot and the people being described in the story.

Work with one or more partners.

Quotations from the text:

‘What’s the government?’ I asked. ‘People who are good to us,’ my father explained, ‘but who also take our money.’
Artisan labour, they proclaimed on small tags in the sterling surfaces of the shop counters, and because each item had that little label it could be sold at a hundred times the price of my mother’s labour.
My seven-year-old self took umbrage at that umbrella. I wanted the five dollars in hand, damn it, I wanted to be paid like a proper Asian back-shed worker so I could use my ill-gotten gain to get a Babie doll, the poor man’s version of Barbie.
Mum did not deliver her wares to the shops in the inner city because the upmarket clientele of Collins Street was a completely foreign world. The Paris end of Melbourne, they called it, where women walked around with faces like Chanel ads. The kind of beauty that would leak down their necks if it rained.
‘Four-fifty,’ she said. Four-fifty for her four and a half hours of labour. ‘Four-fifty, sister?’ he repeated. ‘Four-fifty is too much.’
I hated being stuck between the four walls of the house. ... Slowly, after a few weeks, my mates petered out, and I knew the only times I would be seeing them was at school.
Mum was locked from the language of the outside world.
She [...] gulped cupfuls of that stuff down like there was no tomorrow, even though she knew there was and that it would be exactly the same as the previous day, and the one before that, and the one before that.
‘My mother’s work gave her a sense of purpose and dignity.’ ‘Dignity? What kind of dignity is that? That’s exploitation!’

Discuss:

Work with partners and discuss the questions below.

What do we know about her parents' life before they arrived in Australia?
What does her mother expect her to do? And how does this affect her relationship with her friends?
How does Alice describe her life as a child? Was it a good childhood?
How would you describe her mother’s working conditions? Give examples from the text where this is described.
What is your impression of the mother? How does the young Alice see her mother? How does Alice see her after she has grown up?
Her mother doesn't speak English and she comes from a country with a very different culture. What do you think her life in Australia was like? Was it a good life?
When confronted by friends, Alice reflects on her mother's life. Why is it so difficult for her friends at the university to understand her reflections? Do you agree with Alice?

I thought about my mum working for two decades, an active independent business contractor. Then I thought about her not working, lying in bed at home with limp creaking limbs and Zoloft in her bloodstream. 'It wasn't that bad, really.'

Analyse:

You can work alone or with a partner. Write down the answers.

Go through the first paragraph of the text and find examples of personification and simile. What is the effect of these literary devices?
If you take a look at the first and the last paragraph of the story, you will see that they mirror each other. Why do you think Alice Pung does this? What is the effect?
Comment on the last sentence: 'The door to the shed is still locked'. Is she only talking about the door to the shed, or could this sentence have a double meaning? If so, what is ‘still locked’?
This story is a first-person narration. How does this form the story? How would a third-person narration have changed the story?
Is this a short story or a narrative essay? Find out more about the difference between the two genres.

Research:

Choose one of the tasks and find out more about it. Share your findings in a group or with the class.

Alice Pung's parents were refugees from Cambodia.
Find out what happened in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979. Who was Pol Pot? What was Khmer Rouge? And what were 'the Killing fields'?
Just like the United States, Australia is a country built on immigration. Find out more about the ethnic demographics of Australia. Where do the majority of Australians originally 'come from'?
In 2013, the Australian government introduced a new refugee policy called Operation Sovereign Borders (OSB). Find out more about this policy and why it was so controversial.

Write:

Pick one of the tasks and write a longer text.

Choose one of the research tasks above. Do some research, then write an expository essay, covering the topic.
Write a text from the first person perspective where Alice Pung's mother describes her life in Australia. Use your imagination. You may ask yourself questions like: What does she miss from her life in Cambodia? What does she like about Australia, and what does she not like? What are her biggest regrets? What is her greatest pride? What is it like to live in a country where you don't speak the language?