When my reading group chose our books for the second half of the year, the shortlist for the Miles Franklin Award had not yet been announced. However, wonderfully, the three books we chose from the longlist, all ended up on the shortlist. One of those was Winnie Dunn’s debut novel, Dirt poor Islanders. It is the first novel published by a Tongan Australian, and adds a welcome strand to the body of Australia’s second and third generation migrant literature.
Dirt poor Islanders spans around a year when its protagonist Meadow is approaching 12 years old. It can, therefore, also be read as a coming-of-age novel. It is a raw, earthy, honest and sometimes confronting read that exposes the challenges faced by Australian-born migrant generations, who are caught between two worlds.
This is not a new story. However, what is impressive here is that Dunn, in her first novel, has found her own strong and clear voice. It’s there in the way she gets right into the head of her protagonist Meadow, who is, admittedly, modelled on herself. It’s there in the way she interweaves English and Tongan language, capturing the vitality in her migrant community. It’s also there in her use of repetition, some of it onomatopoeic, to give her writing rhythm and create a tone that’s sometimes melancholic, sometimes humorous. Dunn also doesn’t spoon-feed her readers. She expects us to go with the flow and make the necessary connections. It’s not hard reading, but it does require attention.
“this way of seeing myself as half … and never enough” (Meadow)
So, who is Meadow? She’s a young girl who lost her birth mother at the age of 4. At the novel’s opening she is the eldest of six children in a blended family comprising three children from her birth mother, one from her step-mother, and two from this second marriage. Another is on the way. Her father is 30 years old. Meadow is grappling with what it means to grow up Tongan, particularly one who is hafekasi (half-Tongan half-White) and feeling caught between two worlds, neither of which fully accept her. She is desperate for a mother, and feels closest to her namesake, aunt Meadow, who lives in Mount Druitt with our Meadow’s paternal grandmother and another four aunts.
We follow Meadow through a tumultuous year. Early on, she spends most weekends at her Nana’s house surrounded by the five aunts, but when her father buys a new house in Plumpton, he wants Meadow, her sister Nettie and brother Jared, to call that home. With her birth mother gone, however, Meadow feels “stuck” and insecure. Aunt Meadow, also known as Lahi, is her “mother-aunt” and her rock. The narrative is built around the wedding of this Lahi, who, Meadow believes, is more interested in women. She fears for her boyish aunt, but she also fears for herself, that she will lose this mother figure to whom she clings with all her being.
Now, Meadow wants to be a writer, so she’s an observant girl, well able to express her feelings. She sees the messiness – literal and figurative – of Tongan lives, and she shares the lessons she is learning about being Tongan, not all of which are pretty. For example, “Tongan meant dirty” (p. 37), “being a joke” (p. 73) and “second best” (p. 102). But, there are positives too. “Togetherness was what it meant to be Tongan” (p. 40) and “being Tongan meant eating together and being grateful to eat together” (p. 118).
Dirt poor Islanders, then, depicts a migrant family living under stress. Big families and low-paying jobs with long hours mean a chaotic home. Meadow’s scalp is nit-infested, and her home, decorated with second-hand goods, much picked off roadsides, is cockroach-infested. Her parents work hard to keep the family sheltered and fed, but the mess overwhelms. Flipping between maturity and immaturity, Meadow sees all this – the hard work, the exhaustion, the love – but she struggles to find her place, to accept her Tongan heritage.
It all finally comes to a head, and her father organises for her to go to Tonga, because, he says, “it’s time for youse to know what being a Tongan truly means” (p. 239).
Migrant literature encompasses both memoir and fiction, with the latter mostly being autobiographical or autofiction. Dunn confirmed in her Conversations interview that much of the novel’s family background comes from her life, but the novel diverges from real life in its narrative arc and the resolution of Meadow’s inner turmoil. This answered the question I had as I was reading, which was why Dunn had chosen fiction, like Melina Marchetta did in Looking for Alibrandi, over memoir, like Alice Pung did in Unpolished gem. It’s a choice. What matters are the truths conveyed, not the facts, and Dirt poor Islanders feels truthful.
This truth is not all raw and confronting as I may have implied at the beginning. It is also warm and humorous. Meadow, who doesn’t like rich, fatty Tongan food tells us:
If it came out of a can covered in sugar and sodium, Tongans were eating it. But back then, all I wanted was food that came out of a window. (p. 37)
Preferably at Maccas! There are also funny scenes, many relating to the wedding which occupies the novel’s centre, and which is another nod – besides the title and epigraph – to the book that clearly inspired Dunn, Kevin Kwan’s Crazy rich Asians.
“no one could live as half of themselves” (Meadow)
However, Dunn’s book is fundamentally different from Kwan’s, whose aim, he said, was, to “introduce a contemporary Asia to a North American audience”. Dunn did want to introduce Tongan Australian culture – and counteract the image presented by Chris Lilley in Summer Heights High – but through Meadow, she also explores the excruciating difficulties children caught between cultures face. By the end of the novel Meadow comes to understand a little more the “messy truth” of being an Islander, and that:
No one could live as half of themselves. To live, I needed to embrace Brown, pālangi, noble, peasant, Tonga, Australia – Islander. (p. 275)
Dirt poor Islanders is both shocking and exciting to read, which is probably just what Dunn intended. I feel richer for it!
Winnie Dunn
Dirt poor Islanders
Sydney: Hachette Australia, 2024
293pp.
ISBN: 9780733649264
Whispering Gums 
That’s a very fine thing to say about a book !! – she will be thrilled, I can only think.
Here’s me with another side-issue: why do poor men have to be so bloody prolific in their child-producing ? If only they could think of their unfortunate women, obliged to keep churning out children, by keeping their dicks in their pants a bit more, there wouldn’t be such wide-spread poverty.
What’s that ? – infantile simplicity ?
True, but …
Thanks MR. I hear you, but I think there’s probably also cultural differences in this?
You mean the mindset that dictates having lots and lots of progeny so that they’ll look after you when you’re old ?
I just mean that different cultures have different ideas about family and family size. Why it’s part of a culture probably varies greatly from culture to culture. My guess too is that ideas about family makeup and size can stay in a culture after those reasons no longer exist. Our thinking and behaviour tend to lag behind changes in environment and circumstances I think?
Oh there you go again, being reasonable.
I shall in all likelihood forever be intolerant.
I thought Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians was great fun! And I think there are issues percolating beneath his stories that one can choose to engage with…or, not…you can choose to simply be entertained. I enjoyed the film, too, but as much as I liked it, I don’t think there was any sense of another layer to the story. (Perhaps that’s fair… I actually cannot recall whether there was as much of that in his first novel, perhaps more in his later books. And it’s light-handed there too, IMO.) Funny, when I’d read about this novel previously, I woudln’t have thought Kwan would have been an influence.
No, Marcie, I wouldn’t have at first either, but then the epigraph is a quote from Crazy rich Asians and the title Dirty poor Islanders is a riff on Crazy rich Asians. Also I was wondering as I read this book why the wedding took such centre stage occupying several chapters. I think she must have realised that that was a good narrative arc that could explore many issues and aspects of culture as week as of her character’s personal worries. I think she’s been quite clever in using that book without actually slavishly following it to develop her own themes. Thanks for the opportunity to explore these ideas more. You have an ability to do that in your comments which I appreciate!
Ahhh, the epigraph would have got me, too. And, then that extended wedding, yes. For just a moment, I thought, waiiit, CRA was also a retelling! But, no, it was Kwan’s novel S*x and Vanity that was also a retelling (of Forster’s A Room with a View). Thanks for saying so, as I often feel like I’m commenting around your post rather than directly in response to it…a result of having read about 2-and-a-half AusLit novels…so it’s nice to think there’s still dialogue possible even so.
You are excellent at making relevant comments and starting good conversations even if you haven’t read the book. Never fear about that. I haven’t read any of Kwan’s novels. I only saw the film of CRA. But, presumably Dunn read the book since she quotes from it for her epigraph.
I feel like this is one I would enjoy. Thanks for bringing it to my attention, Sue.
A pleasure Theresa. I think you probably would.
Thanks for this terrific review, Sue. This book has been on my radar for some time. I shall be pushing it up higher on the TBR after reading this.
That’s what I love to hear Angela. What I mean is, there are so many books we want to read so I’m glad when something I write helps a reader make a decision about their reading choice. I think you’d appreciate this one.
I haven’t read Crazy Rich Asians (though I have the sequel China Rich Girlfriend, not that I’d recommend it) nor Dirt Poor Islanders. The general family situation you outlined was nagging at me, felt familiar, perhaps because Chelsea Watego’s father had Islander heritage, and she grew up in the poorer parts of Brisbane. There’s also Aaron Fa’Aoso, whose heritage includes Torres Strait Islander and Tongan, who also (co)wrote a YA novel
Thanks Bill. It might be worth your checking it out if you can fit it in amongst all your projects! I have Aaron Fa’Aoso’s YA novel next to my bed, but I suspect it will be a couple of months yet before I get to it, particularly with my travel plans.
I recently heard a review of this book on the radio. Might have been the ABC. Looks and sounds interesting and good on a book from Tonga. Another culture for Australia to read about.
Probably was the ABC Pam – one of the Book Shows did it I believe (but I haven’t caught up with that yet) and she was on Conversations, too, but of course that wasn’t a review.
Yes I heard that. We went to the Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski (sp?) tour at Theatre Royal yesterday. It was very funny. He brought out Richard Flanagan as a surprise guest. The two Richards are firm friends.
Oh how wonderful … hope you write a bit about it in your next post.
Thanks for this review, this one really appealed to me from the Miles Short List too, but I haven’t read it. The Miles certainly had some diversity this year… Next year I might pick up reading the short list of it again…
Thanks Rach … it was certainly an interesting and appealing shortlist this year I agree. I won’t be promising to read anything, however!!
I’ve gone to talks with authors who claimed they chose fiction over non-fiction because sometimes the end of their own story wasn’t interesting, and sometimes it wasn’t good; they essentially write out the story they wished happened, one in which they are saved.
I wondered if the novel had love and guts times because the cover image suggests as much. It’s beautiful.
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