responsibility to be able to talk about a fictional version of my own lived experience as a Tongan Australian,” she told the ABC.“ Because there are no fiction books written by Tongans in this country.”

Instead, for many Australians, their only‘ representation’ of Tongans came from Chris Lilley’ s Summer Heights High and its spin-off Jonah from Tonga, where Lilley donned a brownface to play a caricatured Tongan schoolboy. Dunn was 14 when the series aired.“ It made me ashamed to be Tongan,” she recalled.“ I remember going to school and there was this Anglo-Saxon kid wearing a sarong, strumming a ukulele and quoting Jonah. I felt like I was the butt end of someone’ s joke.”

Seven years later, SBS filmed Struggle Street in her neighbourhood, a documentary widely criticised as‘ poverty porn’. Again, Dunn felt her community’ s story was being told by outsiders in ways that reinforced stigma.

“ I didn’ t feel like there was any room for people like me to tell their own stories,” she said.

Dirt Poor Islanders is Dunn’ s answer to that lack of representation. Its protagonist, Meadow Reed, shares much of her creator’ s lived experience.

In one excerpt, a young Meadow hides behind her grandmother as a neighbour yells,“ Pack ya hula-hula crap and shove it … this here’ s Ozstrayla, dammit. Eff off to Fiji.”

Later, in a gifted and talented class,

another student ends a speech with a patronising nod to Pacific neighbours,“ I extend a generous hand of financial aid so that you can solve illiteracy, violence, obesity and rising sea levels.”

Meadow’ s response is immediate,“ In that split second I planted my fist straight into her mouth.”

Through these sharp, often confronting scenes, Dunn captures the tension of growing up between cultures and of being seen as both“ other” and invisible.

By the novel’ s end, Meadow finds connection during a visit to Tonga, where spirit, land, and identity unite. Dunn herself had a similar experience on her own second trip to the island at age 24.

Dunn has spoken about her love of reading and writing, even though it was not encouraged at home.

“ My parents and none of my siblings like reading or studying, they’ re focused on other things,” she said.“ But writing a novel about Western Sydney was important because it’ s about demystifying a place that has been demonised.”

As a teenager, however, she felt torn between cultures. While her public primary school was full of Samoan, Tongan and Fijian classmates, her independent religious high school was overwhelmingly Anglo.

“ It was very much monocultural I was probably one of three Tongans in the whole school. It was quite a culture shock, and unfortunately it was in that space where I learned to be ashamed of

my culture and to hate myself.”

The turning point came at a writing workshop where she met Dr Michael Mohammed Ahmad, who founded the Sweatshop Literacy Movement in 2012.

“ That’ s where I encountered Western Sydney literature written by people from Western Sydney for the very first time,” Dunn explained.“ It opened the floodgates for me to start thinking about own voices, my narratives, and empowering myself through storytelling.”

For Dunn, storytelling is not just personal expression— it is political, cultural, and restorative.

“ Pasifika people are seen as quite poor,” she has said.“ But I wanted to bring this idea that dirt, the earth, and the places you come from are actually quite rich in and of themselves.”

Her debut novel embodies that philosophy, reclaiming the soil of her

upbringing as something fertile, not barren.

And while she is already widely celebrated, Dunn remains at the beginning of what promises to be a remarkable literary career.

If Jack Gibson were still alive, he might have said it best,“ You’ ve done good. Write some more.”