{ "item_title" : "The Yield", "item_author" : [" Tara June Winch "], "item_description" : "Winner of the 2020 Miles Franklin Literary Award and 2021 Kate Challis RAKA AwardA beautifully written novel that puts language at the heart of remembering the past and understanding the present.--Kate MortonA groundbreaking novel for black and white Australia.--Richard Flanagan, Man Booker Prize winning author of The Narrow Road to the Deep NorthA young Australian woman searches for her grandfather's dictionary, the key to halting a mining company from destroying her family's home and ancestral land in this exquisitely written, heartbreaking, yet hopeful novel of culture, language, tradition, suffering, and empowerment in the tradition of Louise Erdrich, Sandra Cisneros, and Amy Harmon. Knowing that he will soon die, Albert Poppy Gondiwindi has one final task he must fulfill. A member of the indigenous Wiradjuri tribe, he has spent his adult life in Prosperous House and the town of Massacre Plains, a small enclave on the banks of the Murrumby River. Before he takes his last breath, Poppy is determined to pass on the language of his people, the traditions of his ancestors, and everything that was ever remembered by those who came before him. The land itself aids him; he finds the words on the wind.After his passing, Poppy's granddaughter, August, returns home from Europe, where she has lived the past ten years, to attend his burial. Her overwhelming grief is compounded by the pain, anger, and sadness of memory--of growing up in poverty before her mother's incarceration, of the racism she and her people endured, of the mysterious disappearance of her sister when they were children; an event that has haunted her and changed her life. Her homecoming is bittersweet as she confronts the love of her kin and news that Prosperous is to be repossessed by a mining company. Determined to make amends and honor Poppy and her family, she vows to save their land--a quest guided by the voice of her grandfather that leads into the past, the stories of her people, the secrets of the river.Told in three masterfully woven narratives, The Yield is a celebration of language and an exploration of what makes a place home. A story of a people and a culture dispossessed, it is also a joyful reminder of what once was and what endures--a powerful reclaiming of Indigenous language, storytelling, and identity, that offers hope for the future.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers1.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/0/06/300/346/0063003465_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "27.99", "online_price" : "27.99", "our_price" : "27.99", "club_price" : "27.99", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "" } }

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The Yield

In Tara June Winch’s engaging third book, The Yield, a young woman named August Gondiwindi flies back to Australia, rents a car and drives seven hours inland to the aptly named town of Massacre Plains. This is the small town where August grew up in the care of her grandparents. It’s a place “where the sun slap[s] the earth with an open palm.” It’s the place she fled as a teenager after the traumatic disappearance of her older sister and protector. She is returning after many years for the funeral of her grandfather, Albert “Poppy” Gondiwindi, a revered Wiradjuri (indigenous Australian) elder. She soon discovers that her grandmother and family members are being evicted from their lands because an extraction company has acquired the mineral rights and plans to excavate a vast open-pit tin mine.

Even with a slightly pat ending, this thread of Winch’s narrative is irresistible, as she offers the reader both a tactile and spiritual feel for the forbidding landscape. Her portrayal of August’s rediscovery of herself and her ties to her home is moving. She presents the legacy of oppression and strife among local indigenous people and European settlers with great nuance.

But it’s when this initial thread intertwines with two other storylines that the novel fully realizes itself. One of these narratives is a long letter, a testimony of sorts, from an early 19th-century missionary who finds his calling among the oppressed Wiradjuri. In contrast to church and government powers, he comes to oppose the policy of tearing children from their families in order to “civilize” them. He realizes that the supposed “stupidity” of the indigenous people is actually a profound understanding of their environment. He worries constantly that his ministrations are not helpful, and he discovers that his advocacy makes him a hated outsider.

The other and most innovative thread involves excerpts from the dictionary of Wiradjuri words that Poppy begins compiling near the end of his life. Stripping a people of their language is a standard method for snuffing out indigenous cultures. Poppy’s effort is an act of resistance and affirmation. But the dictionary appears to be lost, and one of August’s quests is to find it.

Winch, an award-winning Aboriginal Australian writer who is now based in France, uses this dictionary of recovered indigenous words to transmit the deeper story of Gondiwindi family history. We read it—and the novel as a whole—with both sorrow and hope.