Dirt Poor Islanders

by Winnie Dunn

Hachette

ISBN 978-0733649264

Reviewed by ISABEL HOWARD

Intercultural struggle is the main question at hand in Winnie Dunn’s Dirt Poor Islanders: how do you define yourself between two different cultures that shape every aspect of your life? Dunn’s novel is written from the perspective of Meadow, a young, mixed-race Tongan and white girl growing up in Mt Druitt in the Western suburbs of Sydney and traces her gradual assertion of who she is as she becomes a young woman. With a liberal peppering of millennial Australian and Tongan cultural references it explores themes of girl and motherhood, sexuality and poverty. But at its crux, it provides an internal viewpoint