Sweatshop Women: Volume One
Winnie Dunn (ed)
Western Sydney Literacy Movement: 2019
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It’s a bitterly cold and wet Monday evening and around fifteen women have turned up to a writing workshop in Paramatta, a suburb in the heartland of Sydney. They gather in a circle in a classroom as Winnie Dunn, a Tongan Australian writer, leads the fortnightly workshop. Dunn is the editor and general manager of Sweatshop, a self-described “literacy movement” on a mission “to [empower] marginalised communities in Western Sydney through the development of critical consciousness and creative outcomes”.

The two-hour workshop begins with the writers volunteering to read their work aloud. Dunn stops them line by line to give them feedback. She explains how specific phrases in their writing are clichéd, while other parts need to be “unpacked” and filled with more descriptive context. All regular enough. But an hour into the workshop, Dunn turns up the dial, unmasking an anger that is a part of the Sweatshop movement.

• Tags: Aimee Chanthadavong, Issue 16