Gold symbolizes security, wealth, and success within Unpolished Gem. In Phnom Penh under the Khmer Rouge regime, Pol Pot closes the banks and turns their money into “worthless pieces of dirty paper,” and only gold retains its value. Once the Pungs leave Cambodia, Kien still buries gold in the backyard to remind her of her life in the old country. She also earns her living making gold jewelry out of her garage, but she considers it too precious a metal to wear herself. While Kien spends all her time selling gold, Alice argues that it is the gold that really owns Kien. Making gold jewelry wrecks her skin and lungs, keeps her from her family, and ultimately leaves her unable to work. Alice also draws a powerful connection between gold and self-worth when she realizes that she is in fact “gold not yellow.” Alice’s connections with gold suggests that family, not material wealth or gold, is the best indicator of success.
Gold Quotes in Unpolished Gem
He steps out onto the footpath, away from the damp smells of the market. This is the suburb of madcap Franco Cuzzo and his polished furniture, the suburb that made Russell Crowe rich and famous for shaving his head and beating up ethnic minorities, so it doesn’t really matter that these footpaths are not lined with gold but dotted with coruscating black circles where people spat out gum eons ago. “Don’t swallow the rubber candy,” mothers say to their kids. “Spit it out. Spit it out now—that’s right, onto the ground there.” Ah, this wondrous new country where children are scared of dying because they have swallowed some Spearmint Wrigley’s, not because they stepped on a condensed milk tin filled with ammunition!
My grandmother was meant to be a part of me forever, so that I would always know that there was a life before me, and a life after me. My grandmother and her stories. What would I do without them? She asserted my existence before I knew I had one—before I was conscious I had a life beyond the present—and she told me my childhood. “Agheare, when you were small you could recite long Teochew songs and poems.” “Agheare, when you were small you could speak in Cantonese.” It seemed as if I could do anything when I was small. We slept in the same bed, and it was always warm. Now there would be no one left to remind me of my roots, no one to tell me to be proud to be part of a thousand-year-old culture, no one to tell me that I was gold not yellow.
Then, four weeks later, I decided that one of the little ones had to go. It was time. I imagined they were quivering in their cotton-wool padded prison, I was so excited. But when the drawer was opened—horror of all horrors, worse than finding my fortunes furtively stolen—ants spilled out and the bunny had melted and the goo that gushed from the eggs had wrecked my box. I didn’t care about the ants that would crawl up my arms, I pulled the whole drawer out of the cupboard and dug my hands in deep. While Alexander and Andrew watched, I started pulling out each egg one by one—or what was left of them—trying in desperation to find one that was not insect-infested, trying to sort through the foil and frustration, not wanting to believe that these squished tragedies were once my pride and joy, the things I had looked forward to most in the world for more than four weeks.
Gold Symbol Timeline in Unpolished Gem
