The Yield Study Guide

Tara June Winch is an Australian writer based in France. Her father is a member of the Wiradjuri nation from New South Wales. Winch grew up in Woonona, a coastal suburb located within the Wollongong region. Place and Indigenous identity both play a large role in most of her writing. Winch’s first novel, Swallow the Air, was published in 2006 to critical acclaim and won several Australian literary awards. In 2008, Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka mentored Winch as part of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, which pairs young artists with craft masters in order to foster creative collaboration. In 2016, Winch published her story collection, After the Carnage, followed by her 2019 novel The Yield. In 2020, The Yield claimed seven national literary awards in Australia, including the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for fiction. The novel has also been translated into numerous languages. Winch has contributed to numerous anthologies about her experience growing up as an Aboriginal woman in Australia. Additionally, she wrote the script for the Carriberrie, an Indigenous dance documentary, in 2018. Winch is currently working on her fourth book, Geography.

Prior to European colonization, Aboriginal Australians lived in egalitarian societies, created unique artwork, and spoke 250 distinct languages. During the 17th and 18th centuries, Dutch, British, and French explorers discovered and mapped the continent. In 1788, 11 British ships known as the First Fleet landed in Botany Bay and established the colony of New South Wales. Lured by the promise of land grants, European settlers expanded across the continent with disastrous consequences for its indigenous inhabitants or the land. In their efforts to cultivate the land, colonists introduced invasive species which wreaked havoc on native ecosystems, resulting in widespread environmental damage. Having been isolated for 60,000 years, many Aboriginal Australians succumbed to diseases introduced by the colonists, including smallpox. Unsurprisingly, violent conflicts arose between British settlers and various Aboriginal groups, resulting in numerous massacres. From 1788 to 1928, it is estimated that 1,700 settlers and up to 20,000 Aboriginal people died as a result of such conflict. Under the guise of assimilation, European settlers abused Aboriginal people, forbade them from speaking their native languages, and separated them from their children, decimating indigenous culture. The Wiradjuri people (of which Winch is a member) are the largest Aboriginal group in New South Wales. While the Wiradjuri language is extremely endangered, scholars like elder Stan Grant and linguist John Rudder are working hard to revive it.

Taboo (2017) by Kim Scott follows a group of Aboriginal Australians making a pilgrimage to the site of a massacre at the behest of a White man seeking absolution. Melissa Lucashenko’s 2018 novel Too Much Lip, which chronicles the hometown return of an Aboriginal woman on the eve of her grandfather’s death, is sure to satisfy those drawn to the Gondiwindis’ tumultuous family saga. For a closer look at post-colonial injustice, The White Girl (2019) by Tony Birch describes an Aboriginal grandmother’s struggles to protect her granddaughter from a government intent on separating Indigenous children from their families. Alexis Wright’s Praiseworthy (2023), a surreal family epic grappling with ecological catastrophe, ancestral trauma, and post-colonial oppression, offers a deeper look into Aboriginal spirituality. Winch herself recommends Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu (2014) for those looking to deepen their knowledge of the agricultural practices of Aboriginal Australians. Ruth Hegarty’s 1999 memoir Is That You Ruthie? chronicles the author’s memories from living on an Aboriginal mission before being sent out to serve on a station homestead. Finally, John Harris’s One Blood: 200 Years of Aboriginal Encounter with Christianity: A Story of Hope (1990) offers an unflinching look at the history of Christianity and its passage to Aboriginal Australians.