FICTION Dirrayawadha Anita Heiss Simon & Schuster, $32.99 It is a truism that travel broadens the mind. Linguists say that learning a second language re-programs it.
Language explains the world to humans; and its many complexities, from tonal languages to those with grammatical gender, are a perfect wonder. Consider the Australian Indigenous languages, such as Dyirbal in North Queensland, where lexical rules classify what is edible, or a vegetable. To speak these languages is to know how to survive, as Burke and Wills did not.
Anita Heiss is not a horror writer, and the worst incidents tend to happen offstage in her new novel. Credit: Dean Sewell Anita Heiss, author and proud Wiradyuri woman, grew up speaking the colonisers’ language: English. In middle life she learnt her ancestral speech.
Her decision was to use it in book titles, even if the result was long, such as Bila Yarrudhanggalangdhuray . She also introduced Wiradyuri words into her books, with only a glossary at the end. It makes the reader work, and stretches their mind.
They learn words in a musical and lyrical language: guyang-galang means fires. But learning Wiradyuri had an effect on Heiss too, pushing her to another level of skill. Bila sold well, and won a major award.
Bila was a personal and political project, to depict white colonisation from the view of those colonised. As such it is part of the reconciliation process, but it also belongs to the genre of popular historical novel. Such books are major tr.