Reviews with content warning for Homophobia - Dirt Poor Islanders

Reviews tagging 'Homophobia'

Dirt Poor Islanders by Winnie Dunn

3 reviews

serendipitysbooks's review

emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Dirt Poor Islanders is apparently the first work of fiction exploring the lives of the Tongan community in Australia. It is a work of autofiction set in both the Mount Druitt suburb of Sydney and in Tonga. It's a coming of age story as Meadow Reed comes to terms with her identity (half Tongan, half white) and learns to understand and be proud of her Tongan heritage. I really enjoyed the depiction of Meadow's large, loving, somewhat chaotic, imperfect family. Certain aspects of the novel do lend credence to some of the negative stereotypes around Pasifika people living in New Zealand and Australia. I don't want to criticise the book for that, especially knowing it is partially based on the author's own life and that she was prompted to write this book to counter some of those negative stereotypes which were popularised in mainstream media. I suspect it will make some readers uncomfortable, though. What this book does is show that the Tongan community is far more than these stereotypes, and I especially loved the strong bonds between Meadow and both her grandmother and aunt in this regard. I also appreciated the way Tongan mythology was incorporated and the inclusion of Tongan words and phrases. Meadow was a very distinct character who clearly came to life on the page. Her engaging voice hooked me from the beginning. Two other noteworthy aspects of the book struck me. The first was the importance of the trip to Tonga in helping Meadow cement her identity and feel comfortable with her culture. The second was the LGBTIQA+ storyline and the nuanced depiction of how sexuality and gender are viewed and experienced in the Tongan community. Popular and common themes like coming of age, racial and ethnic identity, discrimination, and poverty can feel tired and trite, but the unique and underexplored social setting gave them a fresh, evergreen feel in this novel.

Content Warnings

mylynn's review against another edition

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challenging emotional funny informative medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

Dirt Poor Islanders deftly navigates the complexities of being mixed, away from your roots, in a country that doesn’t try to understand or make space for your culture. I really enjoyed many parts of this coming of age story, but I also had some issues with it (detailed on the next 2 slides).

I really loved how you could feel the Tongan pride throughout this book and I loved learning a little about Tongan mythology and culture. I liked that so much of the Tongan language was included (in full and in Tong-lish). I liked that even though Meadow doesn’t speak Tongan fluently, she understands some and is able to parse it.

The familial relations in this book felt so real to me and Winnie Dunn does a great job at establishing everyone’s distinct personalities and roles. It’s was so interesting to see the clear generational divides between the first generation (Meadow’s grandma), the second generation (her dad and her aunties), and the third generation (Meadow and her siblings and cousins). This felt so real to me, and I can see aspects of it on the CHamoru side of my family.

Meadow and her family experience covert and overt racism, and these interactions are described in such realistic ways that I’m sure these situations must’ve been experienced outside of fiction.

My first issue with this book is the aggressive inclusion of multiple Harry Potter references (I counted at least 3).

It’s 2024, I am BEGGING authors to stop putting Harry Potter references in their books. As someone who used to be solely defined by my (now extinguished) love for HP, I know it was such a big part of a lot of people lives but it’s time to LET IT GO.

JKR has been and is still currently being incredibly harmful to the trans community. Not to mention the weird racist things that are actually in HP. (please google these things if you don’t know what I’m talking about)

By including HP references you are:

Saying that you care more about nostalgia than trans rights
Making people feel unwelcome reading your books
Promoting JKR and sending a message to your reader
Contributing to people putting more money in JKR’s pockets which she then uses to fund anti-trans legislation and organizations

My second issue is the constant usage of “Lebanese” instead of “lesbian”.

I think the author’s choice to replace “lesbian” with the word “Lebanese” multiple times is gross. Meadow does this because she is uncomfortable with the word “lesbian” and eventually she does say the correct word at the end. I get that there is a stigma around being a gay that exists differently in different cultures, but this felt gross and unnecessary to me every time it happened. This “joke” isn’t original or funny, we’ve seen it in media like Golden Girls and Glee already.

Lebanese people exist and don’t deserve to be used as “wordplay” (if we can call it that).

Lesbian is not a bad word.

If the author had only done this once for an “effect” (??) I could sort of understand it but it was done SO MANY TIMES.

Content Warnings

grebegirl's review against another edition

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challenging emotional funny hopeful reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

Some beautifully touching and tender moments. A very raw and immersive. Challenging to read at times but the characters are also funny and endearing

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