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A review by henrymarlene
The Yield by Tara June Winch
5.0
To yield is to reclaim. To yield is to move under pressure. To yield is to produce, provide. August and Albert deliver their versions of yielding through a history that stems for thousands of years. The book conceptualises ngiyawaygunhanha: “existing beyond the living and the dead, in the places of time where god roam. When they know the seen and unseen at once”. There is beauty and terror in the imagery of Gondiwindi, you can smell and feel everything that @tara_june_winch describes. She is able to take the reader back thousands of years through the dictionary compiled by Albert, to the haunting days of colonialism, the life and times of both Albert and August, and what the future may look like in Massacre – and what an apt name for a place it is.
August is a survivor but doesn’t really realise it. She is protected by her grandparents when her parents are absent, she is proceed from abuse by a family member by Jedda, her sister, who has been missing for many years. So many things are taken away from her life, yet she remains standing, and comes back to stand strong again with Elsie, her grandmother, and the stories of the land, culture, language and history that Albert, her grandfather who has just passed land, has left her. Albert was a survivor: taken away as a child, having rights and culture stripped away. And he reclaimed what he knew, what he was part of, and what has always been. As a Gondiwindi elder, Albert’s work to preserve his indigenous language and to find artifacts to stop the destruction of Massacre is brave and hopeful, and tarnished with so much suffering, reflecting the dispossession and abuse over two hundred years.
We all leave impressions of the past - murra - behind – and we must be equally careful, gentle and respectful to the murra left before us as well.
August is a survivor but doesn’t really realise it. She is protected by her grandparents when her parents are absent, she is proceed from abuse by a family member by Jedda, her sister, who has been missing for many years. So many things are taken away from her life, yet she remains standing, and comes back to stand strong again with Elsie, her grandmother, and the stories of the land, culture, language and history that Albert, her grandfather who has just passed land, has left her. Albert was a survivor: taken away as a child, having rights and culture stripped away. And he reclaimed what he knew, what he was part of, and what has always been. As a Gondiwindi elder, Albert’s work to preserve his indigenous language and to find artifacts to stop the destruction of Massacre is brave and hopeful, and tarnished with so much suffering, reflecting the dispossession and abuse over two hundred years.
We all leave impressions of the past - murra - behind – and we must be equally careful, gentle and respectful to the murra left before us as well.