Top Shelf With Winnie Dunn

BOOKS BY LAURA BRADING

As the general manager of Sweatshop, a literacy movement based in Western Sydney devoted to empowering culturally and linguistically diverse communities through reading, writing and critical thinking, Winnie Dunn understands the power of storytelling. The movement aims to create new and complex forms of artistic representations which counteract negative stereotypes and centre ‘own-voices’ narratives. And it’s this same objective that is at the heart of Dunn’s own debut novel which published this week.

About a mixed-race Tongan-Australian girl who comes of age on the streets of Mt Druitt in Western Sydney, Dirt Poor Islanders is about finding a way to be true to yourself and your roots without ignoring where you have come from or denying where you want to go. We caught up with Winnie on the eve of her book’s publication to chat about her reading life.

A book you return to or have re-read.

My biological mother passed away from cancer when I was four. Fifteen years later, I discovered my birth-mother’s diary in a box of her old things. It was written in 1995, the year I was born. With wide and curly handwriting my mother spoke to me from beyond the grave. She would address me in true Western Sydney fashion as ‘Little Bib’, which was short for ‘Little Habib’. I realised that my birth-mother, Mafile’o Theresa Helen Dunn, was a writer from the hood who never got to share her story. When I’m lost or need comfort; I return to my mum’s words.

A book you’re looking forward to reading.

Published by Magabala Books in association with Red Room Poetry, Woven is a collection I’m truly excited about! Australian-born Māori editor and poet, Anne-Marie Te Whiu, brought together First Nations poets from around the globe in dialogue with one another. Each interview discusses methodologies of Indigenous poetic storytelling such as: “solidarity, consensus, family, land, oceans, the moon, remembering, dreaming, sharing, opening, mourning, respect, celebrating, finding, losing, healing and more healing.”

You read everything this author writes. Who is it?

When I need solace in spirituality and romance, I turn to All About Love: New Visions . On the days I need to remember my commitment to writing, editing and literacy activism, I open up Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom . If the men I care for ever fall short in their feminist journey, I revisit The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity and Love . To empower my inner-child, I look no further than Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black . May bell hooks rest in power.

Dunn's debut is a potent novel that opens readers' eyes to the brutal fractures navigated when growing up between two cultures.

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