Deaf Republic Poems

An occupied country is in political unrest, and soldiers break up a protest by shooting Petya, a deaf boy. The gunshot is the last sound the townspeople hear. Every citizen goes deaf, and from then on their resistance is organized in sign language.

The book follows the private lives of people caught inside public violence. Alfonso and Sonya are newly married and expecting a child. Momma Galya runs a puppet theater and uses it to stir up the insurgency. Her girls teach signing during the day, and at night they lure soldiers one at a time to their deaths behind the curtain.

Deaf Republic is a parable told in poems, so the story arrives in short lyric pieces about a cast of named townspeople rather than in continuous prose. It reads as a love story, an elegy and an urgent plea at once, and it keeps returning to the definition of silence.

The collection looks at the atrocities of the present and at the collective silence that meets them. The tone is grave, with moments of defiance and tenderness. It has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the T. S. Eliot Prize, and it won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and the National Jewish Book Award.