Winnie Dunn’s debut novel Dirt Poor Islanders is an impassioned response to detrimental stereotypes
- Written by Jessica Gildersleeve, Professor of English Literature, University of Southern Queensland
Winnie Dunn’s first novel, Dirt Poor Islanders, takes as its epigraph a line from Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians (2013): “Remember, every treasure comes with a price.”
Like Kwan, Dunn has made it her project to bring a more sensitive intercultural understanding to an unfamiliar readership. The title of her novel is a direct echo of Kwan’s. But where Crazy Rich Asians reworks familiar Western views of modern Asia, Dunn’s novel is the very first novel to be published in this country about the Australian Tongan community.
Review: Dirt Poor Islanders – Winnie Dunn (Hachette)
Although Dirt Poor Islanders is her debut novel, Dunn is not new to the literary scene. She has worked with the Sweatshop Literacy Movement, published widely in national and international journals, and edited four anthologies, including Straight Up Islander (2021), a collection celebrating Islander identities and experiences.
That Dirt Poor Islanders draws on Dunn’s lived experience is crucial to its mission. The novel is an impassioned response to dangerous and detrimental stereotypes, such as Chris Lilley’s character Jonah from Tonga. Dunn shows how appreciating the “treasure” of a long and rich cultural heritage has come at the “price” of such reductive impressions, which reflect a lack of interest, empathy and understanding on the part of white Australians.
Whiteness and dirt
Dirt Poor Islanders traces young Meadow Reed’s negotiation of this tension. The novel is a work of autofiction – a blend of autobiography and fiction – which includes metafictional reflections on the genesis of the resulting book.
