Françoise Sagan

Dad had an, uh, a story from, uh, I think your countrywoman, um, uh, Sagan, S- S- A- G- A- N-

Yeah, Françoise Sagan, huh?

Yeah.

And-

Françoise Sagan.

Mm-hmm

... yeah, and sh- she was talking about how that she felt like she lived free, but she said, "Obviously I wasn't free when I was in love"-

So I learnt from those blockbusters that young Asian women had to have real earth-shattering sorrows.

We weren't allowed to have the melancholia accorded to 20th century sad white young women writers like Sylvia Plath or Françoise Sagan, excuse my Bogan pronunciation.

So my book contained no wild swans and no falling leaves.

It's a story firmly set in Footscray, and the very first sentence of Unpolished Gem is, "This story does not begin on a boat," because I really wanted the reader to know from the onset that this was an Australian book, not a refugee success story.