Wiradjuri writer Tara June Winch’s Miles Franklin Award winning novel “The Yield” is about the power of voice and language in the face of secrets, silence and suppression. Set on the banks of the fictional Murrumby River, “The Yield” revolves in time around the Gondiwindi family, primarily Albert ‘Poppy’ Gondiwindi and his granddaughter August Gondiwindi. Albert uses his last days to construct a Wiradjuri dictionary with a knowledge of country gained from his ancestors. While August, who fled to England to escape the painful burden of the past, returns to Australia to attend her grandfather’s funeral and to confront the realisation that she hasn’t escaped anything, that the past is ever-present, and that only by giving that past a voice can their ancestral lands be saved from a mining company. Winch’s novel is one in which distinctive voices are determined to put a stop to centuries of dispossession, and in many ways “The Yield” does just that.
Some of the books and authors discussed in this episode include:
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