Nganajungu Yagu

by Charmaine Papertalk Green

Literary Nonfiction. Poetry. Women's Studies, Native Australian Studies. Forty years ago, letters, words and feelings flowed between a teenage daughter and her mother. Letters written by that teenage daughter--me--handed around family back home, disappeared. Yet letters from that mother to her teenage daughter--me--remained protected in my red life-journey suitcase. I carried them across time and landscapes as a mother would carry her baby in a thaga. In 1978-79, I was living in an Aboriginal girls' hostel in the Bentley suburb of Perth, attending senior high school. Mum and I sent handwritten letters to each other. I was a small-town teenager stepping outside of all things I had ever known. Mum remained in the only world she had ever known. NGANAJUNGU YAGU was inspired by Mother's letters, her life and the love she instilled in me for my people and my culture. A substantial part of that culture is language, and I missed out on so much language interaction having moved away. I talk with my ancestors' language--Badimaya and Wajarri--to honour ancestors, language centres, language workers and those Yamaji who have been and remain generous in passing on cultural knowledge.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Indigenous, Australia

86 pages, Paperback

Published June 1, 2019

Reviews

[Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've taken to reading poetry slowly, a poem at a sitting, but Nganajungu Yagu demanded to be read from start to finish, in a single sitting. Papertalk Green has woven this book tightly in a narrative of love, of family, and of the push and pull of growing into adult relationships with your parents. All this in a family wrenched by trauma and strengthened by resistance.
There's a glossary provided at the back, so you can parse the language and understand the Wadjarri and Badimaya in the poems. It's a slow, but highly rewarding task, bringing the reader into the language far more than with a provided translation.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finished: 03.11.2020
Genre: poetry
Rating: A++++++++++
#AusReadingMonth2020
Conclusion:
Nganajungu Yagu (C.P. Green)
Winner of 2020 Victorian Premier Award and
Winner 2020 ALS Gold Medal for poetry.
This book is breathtaking!


My Thoughts

[sophie · Rating 4 out of 5]

how could anyone read this and not want to write more letters more often? even if they’re short. even if they’re mundane. just to prove you exist. i Will forever be thinking about the preservation of language and self and people and place

[Ely · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really loved the mix of letters and poetry. It's a kind of small collection, but beautiful nonetheless. The real question is; why aren't more people reading Charmaine Papertalk Green?

[Scott Baird (Gunpowder Fiction and Plot) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of letters to ones mother and poetry. It's not the type of book I generally like, but having received it as a gift and it being relatively short, I decided to read it.

This book gave me more insight into Aboriginal culture and why white culture doesn't work for them, than any other book I've read before. Not only did I become angry that we had striped Aboriginal people of their lives and culture and was basically overly cruel, I became angry at my own culture for being shit, for the backwards values it has, for how it mistreats me, for how, if in the early 1900s it just accepted Aboriginal culture, life could have being better for both groups of people. For how it is still ignoring Aboriginal culture and what can be learnt from it.

This felt like (because it absolutely is) Charmaine Papertalk sharing something deeply personally with me, the reader.

My only criticism is that this piece uses Wajarri and Badimaya words and includes a glossary in the back for you to translate - however not every word used is in the glossary.

Not a me book, but I did enjoy it (enjoy is the wrong word) and I do recommend this for anybody who likes poetry.

[Montgomery Peverelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

beautiful! gonna go back and annotate the translations because a lot of it’s in Wajarri and Badimaya

[James Whitmore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nganajungu yagu means “my mother” in Wajarri, a language of the Yamaji peoples of mid-west Western Australia, and this beautiful, profoundly moving collection revolves around Charmaine Papertalk Green’s relationship with her mum. As she writes in an introduction, in 1978 Papertalk Green left her family in Mullewa for school in Perth, staying in a boarding house for Aboriginal girls with only her RJS, her “red journey suitcase”. It is a separation common to many children and parents, but it speaks also to the separation of Aboriginal children from their mothers and culture through various machinations of the colonial state. She and her mother traded letters; she kept her mother’s but hers on the other end have disappeared. In Nganajungu Yagu she reinvents her replies in the present, filling in the years that have passed. Read more on my blog.

[Elese · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, compelling and affective poetry. Papertalk Green shares her bond with her mother generously with the reader, drawing on a range of mediums including colonial documentation and (most notably) letters from her mother. Love the way languages are worked together and the way the poet uses different formats to convey deeply important truths. Everyone living on Aboriginal land must read this.

[Lisa Collyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

'The teenage girl
leaving on her own
with her red coolamon' @Charmaine Papertalk Green
I was privileged to attend a workshop facilitated by Charmaine Papertalk Green as part of the #fourcentresemergingwriters program hosted by @wapoets and I recall Charmaine saying we all have ancestral roots and at the time feeling resistant towards that idea. My family is scattered across the country and I'm completely alienated from my Italian side of the family so felt, at the time, that this didn't apply to me.
I think though that her message must have sunk in slowly over time as I have decided to reclaim that part of my identity in other ways, through poetry. Just as Charmaine takes us on a beautiful journey through letters to her mother about family, culture, and resilience, I am finding that poetry can be a way of constructing an identity even when connection is at a distance.
This very moving multilingual collection, Nganajungu Yagu is available from Corditebooks

[Cathal Reynolds · Rating 4 out of 5]

There’s so much love and respect in these pages. You can really feel Papertalk Green still reaching out to connect and understand her mother, even if she’s responding to letters from before her mother passed. It’s a work of understanding what both her parents went through with Australia’s hideously racist, anti-Indigenous policies of genocide and assimilation. It feels sad but not in a tragic way, in the sort of way that you don’t want to not feel.
TW/CWs: Racism, colonialism/cultural genocide, death of parents

[Madeline Doncon]

Rating this book would feel wrong. I read this book because I wish to know better a woman I looked up to. Someone from my home town who I had the privilege to meet, but not the opportunity to express my admiration to. I only wish this book was longer so I could learn more. I wish I had the Red Journey Satchel with me here. I wish I had a RJS of my own.

[thelibraryofalexandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cant stop crying. I read this within half an hour and this was absolutely stunning. I have no words.

[Kristine · Rating 3 out of 5]

This small book of poetry and commentary recognises and celebrates the love and connection between mother and daughter, that stems from treasured letters exchanged over the years. There is much more to the book than just family connection, or history, there is also a strong voice that talks of both the joy and sorrow of being an indigenous Australian. Some of the poetry is lyrical and beautiful, but some did not resonate with me. The commentary on her mothers letters alternated between the personal and the political, and while I was moved and saddened by some of the text, I struggled to connect with other parts. I rated it as a 3 (I liked it), after my second reading, and recommend it to those who like poetry and have an interest in indigenous Australians.