'After a decade in Europe August Gondiwindi returns to Australia for the funeral of her much-loved grandfather, Albert, at Prosperous House, her only real home and also a place of great grief and devastation.
'Leading up to his death Poppy Gondiwindi has been compiling a dictionary of the language he was forbidden from speaking after being sent to Prosperous House as a child. Poppy was the family storyteller and August is desperate to find the precious book that he had spent his last energies compiling.
'The Yield also tells the story of Reverend Greenleaf, who recalls founding the first mission at Prosperous House and recording the language of the first residents, before being interred as an enemy of the people, being German, during the First World War.
'The Yield, in exquisite prose, carefully and delicately wrestles with questions of environmental degradation, pre-white contact agriculture, theft of language and culture, water, religion and consumption within the realm of a family mourning the death of a beloved man.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
'The Marina du Château room was the perfect location for the 2021 international conference "Indigenous Environmental Practices as Responses to Pollution," directly following the 2021 conference on Alexis Wright's Carpentaria in Brest. On October 21 and 22, 2021, the sunlit room lined with high windows opening on a large, oval balcony directly looked out on the Brest Harbour, such that the sky and ocean became integral parts of the conference venue. The ocean's mesmerizing power added an ethereal touch to the intriguing conversations of all participants, including Alexis Wright and Tara June Winch. Brest was the perfect point of convergence between the Americas and Oceania, with participants from all over the world, virtually and on-site, reflecting on contemporary environmental challenges and the different ways Indigenous artistic practices tackle them.' (Introduction)
'Big things are being asked of history in 2023. Later this year, we will vote in the referendum to enshrine an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representative body – the Voice to Parliament – in the Australian constitution.' (Introduction)
'I’M SURE that without giving a specific example you would be able to generate a mental image of gothic horror, even if it resembles something like Bela Lugosi as Dracula or Boris Karloff as Frankenstein’s monster – images that have been immortalised (pun intended) in the collective conscious by the success of Universal Studios’ early 1930s run of pre-code genre cinema.' (Introduction)
'Since the millennium, Indigenous authors have used the novel to address the problematic connection between whiteness and legal notions of ownership in the foundation of settler Australia. Their texts defy the creation of territory as white property and assert Indigenous sovereignty and relation to country. The article discusses this Indigenous intervention in the context of Western concepts of property and their legal institutionalization that produced a universalized, self-governing white subjectivity as the human norm. In the light of this normativity of white property, it traces recent legislative changes in Australia’s dealing with native title claims to land and ownership. These changes are then read against an interpretation of Tara June Winch’s 2019 novel The Yield, which is part of the larger Indigenous conversation about sovereignty and relation to country. I will show that The Yield demonstrates both the fragility and the resilience of Indigenous relations to land, family, and the law. In that sense, I will read the novel as an exploration of how possession is ambivalent and multi-layered: Winch’s characters belong to country as much as it belongs to and goes through them.'
Source: Abstract.
'Tara June Winch’s multi-award-winning novel is told in three voices, one of which takes the form of a dictionary.'
'The fourth title in Guardian Australia’s Unmissables series is The Yield, the Wiradjuri author’s long-awaited second novel – the writing of which almost destroyed her.' (Introduction)
Tara June Winch
Astrid Edwards
(interviewer),
2019
17415296
2019
single work
podcast
interview
'Tara June Winch is a Wiradjuri writer based in France. Her first novel, Swallow the Air, was critically acclaimed and saw Tara named a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Australian Novelist. Her second book, the collection After the Carnage, was longlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for fiction, shortlisted for the 2017 NSW Premier’s Christina Stead prize for Fiction and the Queensland Literary Award for a collection. Her third novel, The Yield, was released in 2019 and is simply stunning.
'Tara's Indigenous dance documentary, Carriberrie, screened at the 71st Cannes Film Festival. Tara was previously mentored by Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka as part of the prestigious Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
'Whether you're poolside balancing a book with an icy beverage, stealing moments between waves at the beach or catching up on the couch after Christmas, this list of favourites from ABC RN's book experts has got you covered.' (Introduction)
