Joss: A History

by Grace Yee

In the White Hills Cemetery in Bendigo the remains of more than a thousand ‘chinamen’ lie interred, many in unmarked graves. Most were sojourners, who hailed from the Canton region in south China, and found themselves unable to return to their homeland. Joss: A History is inspired by the lived experiences of these early settlers, and their compatriots and descendants across Victoria and New South Wales, and Aotearoa New Zealand. The poems pay tribute to the author’s ancestors, illuminating how they survived – and thrived – amid longstanding colonialist stories that have exoticised and diminished Chinese communities in white settler nations around the Pacific Rim since the gold rushes of the nineteenth century. Refracted through a twenty-first century lens, Joss is grounded in the conviction that the past is not past, that historical events reverberate insistently in the present.

Genres: Poetry

102 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2025

About the author

Grace Yee is a poet and writer living in Melbourne, Australia, on Wurundjeri land. Her work has been widely published and anthologised across Australia and internationally, and has been awarded the Patricia Hackett Prize, the Peter Steele Poetry Award, and a Creative Fellowship at the State Library Victoria. Her debut collection Chinese Fish (Giramondo Publishing) began as part of a PhD thesis on settler Chinese women's storytelling in Aotearoa New Zealand (University of Melbourne, 2016). In 2024, it was awarded the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Poetry and the Victorian Prize for Literature in Australia; and the Mary & Peter Biggs Poetry Award in the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Chinese Fish will be published by Akoya (UK) in 2026. Her second collection Joss: A History was released in Australia and New Zealand with Giramondo in June 2025, and was longlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Award for Poetry and the Margaret & Colin Roderick Literary Award in 2026.

Reviews

[Deb Chapman · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 Uneven read for me, some very illuminating moments and powerful phrases capturing important issues/ feelings/descriptions (one of my criteria for literature!) but some of it too dense for me to really understand. Think the early Chinese migrant lens is a very powerful one and too rare, but I didn’t ‘get’ it as much as her previous collection which I loved. I found the Honour Roll naming all the Chinese Australians born in Victoria who enlisted in WW2, when they were exempt from compulsory enlistment, very powerful: pages and pages of them. This kind of truth telling and getting this minimised and racialised history out in the open is so significant to the stories we tell ourselves and of ourselves. Grace Yee is doing really important (and unique? Unfortunately?) historical and creative work.

[Chris Benetti · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joss: A History is a moving and beautifully considered collection that transforms ancestral memory and historical experience into poetry. Grace Yee brings the lives of early Chinese settlers in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand into conversation with the present, exploring displacement, survival, belonging, identity, and the enduring impact of colonial narratives. I was especially struck by the way the collection treats history as something still alive rather than something safely contained in the past. Personal, reflective, and quietly powerful, these poems offer a meaningful tribute to ancestry while reclaiming stories that deserve to be remembered.

[Courtney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stawell Cemetery: 1.7km from the McDonald's on the corner of Seaby Street and the Western Highway, off Abattoir Road and Cypress Street, three rows of Chinese graves: mountain level precious

I admire the way Grace Yee manipulates language into these angular poetic expressions of history. This collection is inspired by the overlooked, under appreciated and downplayed aspects of Chineses Australian history, particularly in Victoria. This was a beautiful collection and I think I'll find myself revisiting it in the future.

[Elena · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant collection / story from Grace Yee.

My only disappointment was that I think Joss deserved a better cover. Whilst I understand the publisher's usual approach to publishing books in a series of similar covers, for pieces like Grace Yee's poetry, I feel they are deserving of a cover that more closely reflects the writing.

[Roman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Expansively beautiful and tragic.

[Anuja · Rating 4 out of 5]

[3.5]