Tasks: Returning by Alice Pung
Study the text carefully with a partner. Refer to examples from the text in your answers.
Braybrook is a suburb outside Melbourne, Victoria. How is this place described?
How would you describe Layla and the life she's living?
What do Suzanna, Layla, and Alice have in common? In what ways are they different?
Alice is of Asian descent, but she values the friendship of the other two women despite their negative view of immigration. Why?
Just like Americans have their American Dream, Australians have their Australian Dream. According to Alice Pung, is this dream still alive? If so, for whom?
Here are some quotations from the text. Explain what the quotations mean and how they add to your understanding of the plot, the setting, and the people being described in the story.
... in a suburb where most of the residents' blinds were drawn shut during the day, and where they took as much care of their homes as they did their teeth.
... now she was waiting to get dentures made.
'I don't go out much'
'Git lost, we were here first.'
I knew their small talk would inevitably turn to a litany of complaints about the hardships of life and the crappiness of the government, despite their not being entirely sure whether the government we had was Labor or Liberal.
'Have you ever noticed the homeless in the streets? ... They're all Australians.' Suzanne meant that they were all white.
'I saw on the news that the government gives these people money to buy new cars and shit, when the rest of us are living rough, just trying to get by.'
'Imagine if we had never got out of the neighbourhood.' We tried to. We didn't want to even think of the possibility. But we couldn't. ... We were driving away, and on the way back the lights were green in our favour.
How tenuous fate is, how largely due to luck.
In many varieties of English around the world, the personal pronoun 'youse' (or 'yous') is quite common. In this essay, you will find it repeated several times.
Do a bit of research and find out what it means, its origin, and when it is appropriate to use it.
Write a text where you discuss how the topics of racial discrimination, class, and cultural stereotypes are treated in the essay.
Write a text where you explain the origin of and difference between the American Dream and the Australian Dream. Discuss the following question: Is the Australian Dream dead?
Guoskevaš sisdoallu
In this essay, Alice Pung returns to her childhood neighbourhood to meet a friend that she hasn't seen for years.