Reviews tagging 'Genocide'

The Yield by Tara June Winch

16 reviews

colormecaro's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

At first (and the only reason this isn’t 5 stars), it took me a bit to get in a reading flow because of the changing viewpoints the book is told from (a dictionary, an old letter and the main character) but at some point I just started devouring this book. 

As someone who is interested in language and the effects it has on how people think and see the world, I loved this book. As a speaker of different languages (although the languages I speak are nowhere near as complex and full of meaning as many an indigenous language), I appreciated the way in which this book  illustrates how words can’t simply be translated. They hold a whole other dimension which is shown in the dictionary  chapters of the book. By losing indigenous languages we lose all the knowledge they hold. 

Apart from the language aspects, learning more about a culture that has seen the cruelest hardships feels very important. When I was 4 years old, I became fascinated with Australia (mostly its animal world) and as a 6 year old read the stories of the Dreaming (aboriginal origin stories). I was probably too young to reckon with the dark past of Australia, but this feels like a full circle moment. It all ties into my current interests and feelings about the world. I am on a mission to read more indigenous literature from around the world and this was a prime example of my why.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Genocide, and Colonisation

Moderate: Child abuse, Child death, Police brutality, and Sexual content

Minor: Eating disorder, Grief, Hate crime, Terminal illness, Murder, Sexual assault, Drug abuse, Alcoholism, and Death of parent

anniereads221's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character

5.0

This book was a book I had to reread after reading it once. I listened to it and was getting information but did not at all understand how each chapter was interconnecting so I decided to reread it after looking at some people's reviews of it, and understood a lot more of the book as a whole and enjoyed it a lot more 

The three points of view as follows is: 
August centred POV in the third person 
Grandfathers dictionary 
And a letter is being written by a reverend of the ex-missionary 

When it throws you into the story of August going back to her family home in massacre Plains to go to her grandfather's funeral. She hasn't been home since she was sent to Britain and stayed. She wants to find her grandfather's dictionary that he was seen writing before his death. But with that, she also has the memory of her sister in her mind as her sister went missing when she was a child. 

The more we learned, the more I was intrigued and was enjoying the journey of this book. 

I feel like this book won't be for everyone, as the POVs prove. But I am so glad I decided to reread it and understand how it all fitted together properly in the end. 

I am glad I started with this book for 2024 after my rereads of the Monk and Robot series

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Genocide, Death, Murder, Grief, Child death, Racism, Pedophilia, Child abuse, and Colonisation

Moderate: Eating disorder

holly_133's review against another edition

emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Colonisation, Child death, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Grief, Pedophilia, Racism, and Sexual assault

madetofly's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative reflective sad slow-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

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Death, Colonisation, Genocide, Fire/Fire injury, Forced institutionalization, and Violence

Moderate: Murder, Xenophobia, Religious bigotry, Police brutality, Drug use, Child death, and Racism

Minor: Alcoholism and Addiction

rhi_'s review against another edition

challenging dark reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Colonisation and Racism

Moderate: Pedophilia, Violence, Hate crime, Genocide, Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, and Murder

Minor: Sexual violence, Forced institutionalization, Rape, and Police brutality

penguinsquack's review against another edition

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Rape, Slavery, Sexual assault, Terminal illness, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Racism, Child death, Colonisation, Death, Eating disorder, Genocide, Sexual violence, and Racial slurs

skudiklier's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring 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

4.75

This book was very very good. It took me a while to get into it at first, but that was more to do with how I was reading it than the book itself. I love how this story is told, and feel like it's really valuable for anyone to read.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Racial slurs, Police brutality, Death, Racism, Sexual content, Colonisation, Xenophobia, Slavery, Eating disorder, and Genocide

Moderate: Cursing, Fire/Fire injury, Sexual violence, Rape, Blood, Murder, Terminal illness, Gun violence, Alcohol, Death of parent, Child death, Alcoholism, and Cancer

Minor: Animal death, Suicide, Ableism, Vomit, and War

dylan2219's review against another edition

reflective slow-paced

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

3.5

A lot of respect for Tara June Winch for the insane research that went into making this book, which she reveals in her author's note at the end. While the world of The Yield is fictional, it is based on a number of real incidents, places, and memories that occurred in Wiradjuri land, in the Murrumbidgee Valley. As a Wiradjuri woman, writing The Yield must have been both a gutwrenching and deeply cathartic exercise for Winch, which is evident in its often visceral, deeply textured prose. Lots of blood and saliva and dirt and sweat on the pages here, reminding me a lot of Faulkner whom Winch references in the text. Beyond that, The Yield introduced me to both the landscape and the associated dreaming of Wiradjuri country, as well as the Wiradjuri language. The linguistic aspects here are incredibly historically and culturally significant, as Winch weaves Wiradjuri phrasing throughout the book in the form of the Gondiwindi dictionary - which she reproduces in full at the end - creating perhaps the first (?) work of fiction in the Wiradjuri language, enshrining Wiradjuri as a language that will remain preserved in spite of the systematic cultural erasure that has sadly destroyed so many Indigenous languages throughout Australia. Indeed, Winch notes that since Invasion, Indigenous Australian languages have suffered the most extensive and rapid extinction known to history. 

These aspects alone make The Yield a book that should be widely read, as well as an "Australian" text that is deeply world-historically significant, but it does more than restore a language and a culture that has experience so much loss. It is a new, postcolonial spin on a classic Australian narrative of the harshness of the land and our relationship to violent memory. This time, however, Indigenous Australians are centred in the story as primary subjects, rather than ancillary/foils to white colonists, and violence is seen as sustained as a consequence of colonisation, displacement, neglect, and disenfranchisement. The loss of land, rather than its acquisition, is the locus for violence and conflict, here seen in the very relevant dispute of a mining company attempting to acquire the Gondiwindi family's property. We discover that this property - like all property in Australia - has a complicated and often contradictory history of its own. Winch interrogates what land means to many Indigenous people after it has been seized for so long, and the emotional and psychological difficulties of reclaiming it and defending it. 

I did have some structural problems with the book, namely that August is not a particularly compelling or well-developed character, and the plot takes probably too long to kick in (basically not till the final third). Things are wrapped up a little too quickly, with some very weak explanation as to why, because so much time has been spent meditating before Winch needs to build to her climax. This might be due to the complex three-strand narrative that Winch is working here, which I found compelling even if it makes things much slower. The dictionary passages are easily the best thing in here, especially the way they comment on the contemporary narrative, link Greenleaf's narrative to the present, and give us insight into the history of Massacre and the Gondiwindi family. 

Still, The Yield is an immense, significant book that is brilliantly, evocatively written, and is doing incredible things. It's rare to come across a writer who is not only innovating in what novels and "Australian" writing can do, but is genuinely changing history.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Death, Genocide, Colonisation, Grief, and Racism

Moderate: Child abuse, Adult/minor relationship, and Eating disorder

nonistoni's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring sad medium-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Slavery, Colonisation, Genocide, Grief, and Cultural appropriation

Moderate: Child abuse, Kidnapping, Pedophilia, Murder, and Racism

belindapancake's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective sad slow-paced

• Strong character development? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child abuse, Child death, Colonisation, Drug abuse, Forced institutionalization, Genocide, Grief, Hate crime, Incest, Eating disorder, Murder, Pedophilia, Police brutality, Racism, and Slavery