''The Yield'' is a 2019 novel by

Tara June Winch Tara June Winch (born 2 December 1983) is an Australian writer. She is the 2020 winner of the Miles Franklin Award for her book '' The Yield''. Biography Tara June Winch was born in Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia on 2 December 1983. He ...

. She won the 2020

Miles Franklin Award The Miles Franklin Literary Award is an annual literary prize awarded to "a novel which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases". The award was set up according to the Will (law), will of Miles Franklin ...

for this book. The book also won the 2020

Voss Literary Prize The Voss Literary Prize is an annual award named in honour of historian Vivian Robert de Vaux Voss (1930–1963). It is awarded to the best novel published in the previous year and is managed and judged by the Australian University Heads of Engl ...

and the 2020

Prime Minister's Literary Award The Australian Prime Minister's Literary Awards (PMLA) were announced at the end of 2007 by the incoming First Rudd ministry following the 2007 Australian federal election, 2007 election. They are administered by the Minister for the Arts (Aust ...

for fiction.

Synopsis

The novel follows the story of a young

Wiradjuri The Wiradjuri people (; ) are a group of Aboriginal Australian people from central New South Wales, united by common descent through kinship and shared traditions. They survived as skilled hunter-fisher-gatherers, in family groups or clans, a ...

woman returning home to

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

to attend a funeral, and finding her ancestral lands threatened by

mining Mining is the Resource extraction, extraction of valuable geological materials and minerals from the surface of the Earth. Mining is required to obtain most materials that cannot be grown through agriculture, agricultural processes, or feasib ...

. The novel explores language and features a

Wiradjuri language Wiradjuri (; many other spellings, see Wiradjuri) is a Pama–Nyungan language of the Wiradhuric subgroup. It is the traditional language of the Wiradjuri people, an Aboriginal Australian people of New South Wales, Australia. Wiraiari and Je ...

dictionary, as well as themes of

colonialism Colonialism is the control of another territory, natural resources and people by a foreign group. Colonizers control the political and tribal power of the colonised territory. While frequently an Imperialism, imperialist project, colonialism c ...

environmental issues Environmental issues are disruptions in the usual function of ecosystems. Further, these issues can be caused by humans (human impact on the environment) or they can be natural. These issues are considered serious when the ecosystem cannot recov ...

and

intergenerational trauma Intergenerationality is interaction between members of different generations.Klimczuk, Andrzej, ''Intergenerationality, Intergenerational Justice, Intergenerational Policies'', n:S. Thompson (ed.), ''Encyclopedia of Diversity and Social Justice'', ...

Dedication

* Dedication: For my family. * Epigraph: "In the absence of justice, what is sovereignty but organised robbery?" –

Saint Augustine Augustine of Hippo ( , ; ; 13 November 354 – 28 August 430) was a theologian and philosopher of Berbers, Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia (Roman province), Numidia, Roman North Africa. His writings deeply influenced th ...

Publishing history

After the novel's initial publication by

Hamish Hamilton Hamish Hamilton Limited is a publishing imprint and originally a British publishing house, founded in 1931 eponymously by the half- Scot half- American Jamie Hamilton (''Hamish'' is the vocative form of the Gaelic Seumas eaning James ''Jame ...

in Australia in 2019, the book was reprinted as follows: * HarperVia, USA, 2020 *

Penguin Penguins are a group of aquatic flightless birds from the family Spheniscidae () of the order Sphenisciformes (). They live almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere. Only one species, the Galápagos penguin, is equatorial, with a sm ...

, Australia, 2021 * HarperVia, UK, 2021 The novel was also translated into French in 2020, Dutch in 2021, German in 2022, and Polish in 2023.

Critical reception

Writing in the ''

Australian Book Review ''Australian Book Review'' is an Australian arts and literary review. Created in 1961, ''ABR'' is an independent non-profit organisation that publishes articles, reviews, commentaries, essays, and new writing. The aims of the magazine are " ...

'',

Ellen van Neerven Ellen van Neerven (born 1990) is an Aboriginal Australian writer, educator and editor. Their first work of fiction, '' Heat and Light'' (2013), won several awards, and in 2019 Van Neerven won the Queensland Premier's Young Publishers and Writers ...

commented: "''The Yield'' is about regaining more than language. There are odes to

Bruce Pascoe Bruce Pascoe (born 1947) is an Australian writer of literary fiction, non-fiction, poetry, essays and children's literature. As well as his own name, Pascoe has written under the pen names Murray Gray and Leopold Glass. Pascoe identifies as Abor ...

's ''

Dark Emu ''Dark Emu: Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident?'' is a 2014 non-fiction book by Bruce Pascoe. It re-examines colonial accounts of Aboriginal people in Australia, and cites evidence of pre-colonial agriculture, engineering and building cons ...

'', with the pointed inclusions of bush food, bread, and fishing technology. There are only a few places where Winch’s delivery is too didactic, as when Nana tells August, the author speaking directly down the barrel to the reader, ‘we aren’t victims in this story anymore – don't you see that?'." And she concluded: "''The Yield'' will appeal to many because of the way it unpacks complex themes in an accessible way. Australian rural novels are often humourless sketches with characters more like caricatures, grimly serious or full of despair. Refreshingly, the characters in ''The Yield'' are capable of communion, humour, and dignity despite tragedy, sexual violence, and substance abuse. In this deft novel of slow-moving water, they are borne by love, not pity." In ''The Guardian'' Erica Wagner noted: "In Wiradjuri the word for 'yield' is ''baayanha''. But as the reader learns throughout this book, translation is far from simple. 'Yield in English is the reaping, the things that man can take from the land, the thing he's waited for and gets to claim,' Poppy Gondiwindi writes. In Wiradjuri, 'it's the things you give to, the movement, the space between things'. This is a novel full of the spaces in between...This is a complex, satisfying book, both story and testimony. ''The Yield'' works to reclaim a history that never should have been lost in the first place."

Awards

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yield, The 2019 Australian novels Miles Franklin Award–winning works Prime Minister's Literary Award-winning works New South Wales Premier's Prize for Fiction Award-winning works Hamish Hamilton books Books about Indigenous Australians Novels set in New South Wales Novels about mining Environmental fiction books Novels about colonialism Novels about language Wiradjuri Penguin Books books